GG5: Here Comes the Spy
by A Classy Girl
Summary: Senior year. What kind of mischief will Cammie get up to now? Can she trust the people around her? And will she finally get the answers she so desperately desires? Some secrets should never be found out. Some stories should never be told. COMPLETED!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything except the characters I've made up and my imagination. Sadly, the Gallagher Girls series is not mine.**

**This is my first story on here so I welcome any feedback on how to improve my writing and such. I'll try to update as much as possible and try to give my chapters some more length. Until then, enjoy Chapter 1. Also, in case you were wondering, I got the title for the story from the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun".**

* * *

Chapter 1 - _Dancing in the Dark_ (by Bruce Springsteen)

My shoes clacked on the cement of the sidewalk as I strolled along its easy path. In the distance I could hear people laughing and enjoying themselves as fireworks rained down in the sky. It was the Fourth of July and I had been on my own for a month now.

It's surprising how time flies when you're getting nowhere. I had no answers to the questions that were flooding my brain and I was completely alone with no backup. A constant feeling of stupidity and fear had taken up residence in me but I still refused to turn tail and go back to Gallagher Academy where I was safe. I couldn't decide if this was because I was too proud or too scared of my mother's reaction to my leaving.

I turned a corner and headed to downtown. I may have been on my own but that didn't mean I couldn't find a little entertainment in the festivities that were going on around me. As I stepped into the dark alley that would lead me to the party, I felt a shiver go up my spine. The hair on the back of my neck prickled and my senses seemed to heighten. I could smell cotton smell cotton candy and dozens of different types of fried food ahead of me. I could feel the tennis shoes on my feet, soft and worn-in, ready for me to start sprinting at any second. And behind me I could hear the quiet footsteps of someone who thought they were being sneaky.

Obviously, they were wrong.

I made sure not to quicken my pace as all the while I thought back on that new kick we learned in P&E right before finals week. I personally hadn't been able to practice it during class because of my shoulder but I had watched everyone practice it on dummies. It was a pretty effective kick to the neck and I found myself wishing that I had been able to learn it as the steps behind me quickened.

I was halfway down the alley when a hand snaked itself through my arm. I jutted my elbow toward the person's sternum right before ducking down and sweeping my foot behind me. I heard a thud as the person landed on their butt. I straddled their torso and trapped their arms and was just about to smack my forehead into theirs when I looked into their face and saw—

"Matilda?"

The woman below me giggled and effortlessly squirmed her way out from below me. I remained on the ground in shock as the woman who used to babysit me brushed herself off. When she extended her hand to me, I accepted it in a daze. "What are you doing here, Tillie?"

She gave me a little smirk. "I could ask the same of you, Cammie."

I huffed in annoyance and started walking again, this time not showcasing my moves when she slipped her hand through my arm again. "Your mother called me. I guess she found something very distressing of yours and called me in her panic."

"Well, I'm fine. So, you can go and tell her that. I promise I'll be back in time for the beginning of the school year."

"Cam, don't be stubborn. The frown you wear when you are doesn't suit you."

"I'm not!" I exclaimed indignantly. Matilda just rolled her eyes at me.

"So you're telling me that you've actually succeeded in finding answers to the pressing questions in your head? Please. I've been following you since my last mission finished over two weeks ago and you had no idea."

"Well, that's because you're…you. No one can hide from you." This brought a laugh out of her.

"There are a few people who can evade me. But seventeen-year-olds can't." Tillie stopped me as we reached the end of the alley. People were crowding this street, their faces painted in random splashes of color as fireworks exploded above them. Tillie's voice was hushed when she added, "I'm not the only following you, Cammie."

As she said that I noticed a man on a blanket a few yards from us. Unlike everyone else around him, he wasn't gazing at the colors in the sky. Instead, he was looking in a shop window where Tillie and my reflections could be seen. Suddenly, he stood up and gathered his things before walking off.

My eyes shot back to Tillie's face. To anyone else she might have seemed preoccupied with the celebrations going on around her but I could tell that she was scoping the crowd. Looking for other agents. I wondered as I did when I was a little girl, what was so frightening about Matilda Henderson?

I remember how when I was seven, Tillie came over to watch me for the weekend while my parents went on another mission. That was first time she was going to babysit me and when she walked in, I saw my mom visibly stiffen. My dad whispered something in her ear to get her to relax but my mom kept shooting glances at Tillie. Over the years, Mom got more comfortable around Tillie but every once in a while she would get this wary look on her face. Almost as if there was something she didn't trust about Tillie.

When I looked at Tillie, I saw the everyday girl-next-door. She was of average height, had brown hair and eyes, and wasn't a stunning beauty. Before I went to Gallagher, I considered her one of my closest companions despite the fact that her visits came less and less often as I got older. I would never describe her as threatening. But apparently others saw her as such. "Tillie," I said, drawing her attention back to me. "What are you doing here? Really?"

She sighed. "I'm your new protection detail. And we need to move."


	2. Chapter 2

**I'm putting this chapter up now because I'm not going to update at all this week as I'll be on an Internet-less vacation. Enjoy. :)**

* * *

Chapter 2. _Wordplay_ (by Jaosn Mraz)

Tillie took me to the heart of downtown where she checked us into a ritzy hotel. I gave her an odd look as we entered the building but she shrugged her shoulders. When we got into the elevator said, "In my experience, it's actually safest to go to the swankified places. Most operatives have this impression that we have to blend by acting poor as dirt. I say screw that, I want to have a mini-fridge and complimentary breakfast."

I smiled because some things—like Tillie's take on life—never change. When we reached our room, Tillie shot like a bullet to the kitchen area where, sure enough, there was a little, white fridge. As she set about ordering room service, I went to look out at the landscape below us. The fireworks had just ended and cars could be seen and heard as they carried their passengers back to their safe homes. What I would give to be in the middle of traffic, my only worries being if I left the iron on or something, rather than staying one step ahead of people who wanted to kidnap me…

Then again, I sort of still loved my life. Once the Circle was stopped—and I had convinced myself that it _would_ be stopped, hopefully with my help—I would finish up my last year at Gallagher and then begin working for the CIA. Just like I had always planned. The idea that within a year's time I might be an official agent gave me shivers of excitement. And fear, but that was beside the point.

There was a knock at the door and Tillie rushed to grab the food she had ordered. The smell of pizza drew me to the couch and I commenced to stuffing my mouth full of the yummy stuff. Once I was sure I wouldn't choke on my food I asked, "So what's next?"

Tillie didn't answer me right away. Instead, she popped open a Diet Coke from the glorious mini-fridge and took a few swigs from it. Then she looked at me, calculating what my reaction to her words would be. "I'll escort you to a safe house tomorrow morning. You will stay there until school starts up again or I will make you stay there."

I kept my face as blank as possible. Then I said slowly, "I've been doing fine, Tillie."

She gave me a half smile. "Ever see that movie _The Italian Job_?" I shook my head. "Well, in it they say that 'fine' stands for freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. I've never been able to view that word the same since then."

I rolled my eyes. It was just like Matilda to use my lack of pop culture knowledge against me. "So I have no say with what goes on in my life? You and my mom and whoever else are just going to drag me about and put me where you like."

Tillie was very serious when she said, "Until this threat is over, yes."

That's when I knew that no matter what I did, I'd never be able to go and find my answers. Not yet anyways. So with a sigh, I said goodnight to Tillie and went to bed. Oddly enough, knowing that tomorrow I wasn't going to be looking over my shoulder constantly helped me get the best rest I'd had in a month, and when I woke up to the light of a new day, I didn't feel cornered. Maybe a little trapped and childish, but I wasn't as scared at least.

Tillie checked us out after breakfast and when we walked outside I saw that she had somehow gotten a rental car brought to the hotel. The drive started out quiet but then Tillie muttered something about a mission that ended with her and a monkey playing tug-of-war over a banana, and I had to laugh. From that the talk flowed easily just like it used to and when we stopped to get gas and snacks, I learned that she loved grape soda more than anything and that the last time she was home in the U.S. was over seven months ago.

"You've been on a single mission for over half a year now?" I was shocked because while research could easily take that long, the majority of covers lasted two or three months at the most.

Tillie smiled. "No, I've gone from mission to mission. I guess you could say that I've been in high demand lately."

"Oh, and why's that?" I was turned towards her in the car as she started the engine up again. I opened a bag of chips and offered her some.

She shrugged as she chewed and then pulled onto the highway. She obviously wasn't going to answer the question then so I decided to let it slide for the time being and then fling it upon her at a later moment.

Eventually, I fell asleep and the next thing I knew I was being shaken awake in the dark. "Cam, honey, we're here."

"Here" was apparently the inside of what appeared to be an old barn. I got out of the car, closing the door behind me with a clunk that echoed up into the rafters. Tillie was walking to the far end of the barn. She turned her to head and gave me a nod to come over before pushing a series of bricks into the wall and pulling on a seemingly broken piece of wood. The floor to the left us began sinking into the ground, forming a set of stairs. I couldn't help the little gasp I gave. "What the—"

Tillie shot me a look before heading down the steps and I rushed to follow. When my foot left the last step it retracted back up, merging almost seamlessly with the ceiling.

The room around me was very…white. The tile floor, walls, and ceiling were all brightly plain. The desks, cups, computers, and chairs were all white. Even the people down there wore white. Oh, except for that woman with the red scarf. Isn't she daring.

Matilda nudged my arm to get me to follow her again. She opened a door that I didn't know existed and we slipped into a room that, thankfully, had some color in it. And a little something else.

"Bex!"

My best friend practically knocked me over when she slammed into me, effectively hugging the air out of me. "Cam, girl, I missed you! Wait." She stopped hugging me and looked me in the eyes. "No, I'm mad at you. I am really freaking mad at you because you left to have adventures and didn't think to take me with."

I adopted a bashful face. "Sorry, Bex. Next time I'll be sure to invite you."

"You better." Then we smiled at each other because, honestly, it was impossibe to be upset with each other. She hugged me again (though not quite as hardas before) and then sat me down on the couch to tell me about how freaking awesome it was when an agent showed up at her and her parents' place to whisk them away to a yet-to-be-figured-out destination. "I've been here three days." She finished. "They were exciting because, hello, this is an official government base but also boring because it _is _a government base so they weren't keen on me touching or, you know, hearing anything."

Tillie chose this time to talk from behind the pages of the magazine she had magically produced. "Don't worry. I'm sure things will heat up soon enough."

Bex and I both asked at the same time, "Why?"

Tillie sighed deeply as though it was such an effort to talk when all she wanted to was ogle at pictures of Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt. "Because, you synchronized freaks, I've spent quite a bit of time here, so I know the best ways to listen in on conversations that you aren't supposed to be hearing." Bex and I shared a mischievous look when Tillie added, "_And_ I hear that they caught another Circle agent so, you know, there might be some information to take from that."

Now Bex and I were grinning at each other. "So," I said innocently, sidling over by Tillie. "You think you're going to be kept informed on what this agent does or doesn't say?"

Tillie turned a page in her magazine. "I might."

"But if you were kept informed, you wouldn't be able to tell anyone not connected to the case. Right?" Bex said, coming over to Tillie's other side.

Tillie kept her face completely relaxed. God, she had a great poker face. Or she had no idea what we were getting at. "That is true." She said.

"And wouldn't you agree that I am related to the Circle?" I said.

Bex nodded vigorously. "She is the one that they are so desperately trying to kidnap."

Tillie snorted and put down her magazine. She looked Bex and me in the faces intently. "What are you two getting at? I don't have all day to deal with your little hints."

"All we're trying to say, Miss Henderson, is that since the Circle agent that was caught was presumably after Cammie, it would only be fair to keep her updated on any information he tells his interrogators." Bex's eyes were innocent and sincere, the perfect picture of a little kid insisting that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny really did exist.

Tillie gave a little smile. "I don't make promises, girls." She stood up and walked to the door that connected to the white room. Then she looked back at us. "But we'll see."

We waited until she shut the door behind her to have our victory dance.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3. _Inside Out_ (by Sara Bareilles)

Bex and I spent the next week in a state of relative contentedness. Her parents were there to tell us stories of their missions when they weren't working and Tillie was happy to give us the best advice on eavesdropping covertly. The only problem with that was that when she didn't want us to hear something she knew exactly what to do to counteract us.

After putting aside the fact that I was confined to a few windowless rooms below ground, it was easy to forgot what was going on in the world around me. As I lay in bed at night, my thoughts drifted less and less to the Circle. The captured agent almost took a permanent slot at the back of my mind. Almost.

Usually I kept away from the White Room, but one day Bex and I were testing out eavesdropping the way Tillie taught us out there (which actually works way better than we thought it would) when a sudden burst of commotion across the room drew our attention away from Mr. Baxter's plans to grow a soul patch. Bex and I edged closer to the excitement and I saw Tillie standing in front of a doorway I'd never seen before that led to a dark hallway. Over the noise of the room I thought I could hear a person moaning. Before I could verify my hunch though, the door swung shut, blending back into the surrounding white walls perfectly.

I turned my eyes to Tillie's face, sure I would see her staring at me with a cocked eyebrow but instead her face was fuming. Her nostrils were flared and her bright blue eyes seemed almost maniacal. Her lips, which usually bore the hint of a smile, were set in a grim line that was as straight as a board. The overall effect was, in a word, frightening. For once, I could see why a person might run away from Matilda Henderson. She looked menacing.

One of the people working in the White Room walked up to her and whispered in a clearly sarcastic tone to her, "Any breakthroughs yet?"

Tillie rewarded the man with a glare that wiped the smirk off of his face. "No, Yetson, no breakthroughs yet. But I assure that when there is one, you will not be at the top of the list to know whatever the hell the traitor has to say."

The man, Yetson, seemed to coil in on himself and shuffled a couple of steps away from Tillie. Another person, this time a woman who I believed was called Fiona, came up to Tillie and whispered to her so quietly that Bex and I had no hope of hearing what she said. Tillie sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose before her angry expression melted away from her face. She muttered an apology to Yetson before leaving the way she'd come, walking down the dark hallway as the door swung shut behind her again.

Bex and I looked at each other for a long moment. Then, we slinked back to the little bedroom we shared and just sat on the bottom bunk in complete silence. It was minutes before Bex spoke up.

"I know I haven't known Matilda all that long but…didn't that seem out of character?"

I nodded slowly. My eyes stared at the wall as my head spun in circles and my mind had difficulty staying straight. Tillie had been scary. She'd been mad. Something I'd never seen before. But even more than that, I could've sworn she had been afraid. Of what, I wasn't sure. And I wasn't sure I wanted to know. Tillie had always been one of the people in my life who didn't fear a thunderstorm or tremble when she was in trouble. She was too young to be my mom but she'd acted like a second one to me before I went off to Gallagher. She'd braid my hair and sing me lullabies to sleep. So to see that look in her eyes, to see her look so vulnerable, sent chills up my spine. Because if there was anyone in the world who I expected to be as hard as steel, it was Matilda Henderson.

The Baxters and I didn't see Tillie again until dinner and even then she seemed detached, as if she were daydreaming in math class. It wasn't until after the dishes were washed that she told us that she was going on a trip.

"It's just a little one." She said, grabbing a random book off a shelf and opening up to its first page. She settled down on the couch. "I'll be back in a few days. Just some surveillance."

Bex slid over the edge the couch next to Tillie. "Where at?"

"Bex, my dear, I don't mean to sound cliché or mean when I say this, but that is none of your business." Tillie smiled a little and turned a page.

Bex groaned. "Then give us something. This place is starting to get boring." She frowned and twisted her hair into a bun before letting it flop back down. "Hey, has that Circle agent opened his flapper yet?"

I saw Tillie's shoulders stiffen just the slightest bit. Her voice had the smallest strain in it as she said, "Not yet." She let out a long breath and seemed to give up on getting up on any good reading as she put her book down. "But I doubt it'll be long now."

My brow furrowed. "Why?" I asked before I could stop myself.

I saw something flicker in Tillie's eyes. But before I got the chance to figure out what is was, it fizzled out so quickly I thought that maybe I had imagined it. "No reason precisely. The agent just doesn't seem to be the type to hold out very long."

It was Bex's turn to be confused. "But he's held out a week, right? Who's to say he won't last another one? Or two?"

"Because I've gotten a chance to know the agent in the past week. I have a feel for their weaknesses. Interrogations with agents who are trained to withhold information is tricky, but I'm good at what I do. I know how to crack them. Cracking takes time and that I have plenty of." Tillie smiled, seeming to come to a realization that pleased her. "And the agent seems to be a little on the losing side of our talks these days."

With that, she said her goodnights and goodbyes as she would be gone before we woke up. Bex's parents went to bed soon after, leaving just Bex and me in the dim light of the room. Quiet engulfed us, something that seemed to happen more and more often lately. Oddly enough though, it didn't bother me much. It gave me time to think, sort my thoughts out, and try to figure out what was going on in my life.

I couldn't believe that a little less than two years ago, I was sneaking off school grounds to see my secret boyfriend. It seemed almost…normal. At least compared to what was happening now. I felt like I'd been pushed into that age of maturity too quickly, that things had turned darker so fast that I was lost. Every time I thought that I was beginning to climb out to the dark hole I'd fallen into, something made me fall back in…

Bex shifted on the couch next to me and I looked at her. She smiled at me and I returned it, and I remembered that no matter how lost I felt, I could always count on her to pull me out of it. The world was big and I was just one tiny little person, but I had tiny little friends right by my side. And that was what would get me through this.

If only we didn't _have_ to go through it. I sighed and stood up. I was tired and not just from the day that had seemed to drag on for hours. I was tired of feeling cornered and worried and alone. _No more_, I thought as I walked with my friend to bed, _no more thinking like that. I will make it out of that stupid hole because I'm sick and tired of feeling sorry for myself._

And with that, I fell asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sorry it took me a while to update. I feel bad about it because I don't have much of an excuse. I'll try to be better with my updates though. Promise!  
**

**Oh, and I don't own anything except the stuff I make up.  
**

* * *

Chapter 4. _Get Out of This Town _(by Carrie Underwood)

Three days later, I woke to yet another commotion. I shot out of bed, raced through my bedroom and the sitting room, and opened the door to the White Room. The noise filled my ears entirely now and I saw people rushing about. I searched with my eyes for the Baxters and saw Mrs. Baxter standing behind an analyst as the man hurriedly typed something into his computer. Then, the screen went black and a smoke started to ooze out of the vents of all the computers in the room.

Someone grabbed my elbow. "Cammie," Mr. Baxter said, "Pack your things. Quickly." He started pulling me back towards the rooms I had just vacated. He set me in front of the dresser and grabbed Bex's and my suitcases out of the closet. Then he rattled the nearest post of the bunk Bex was still asleep on, shaking out of her dreaming.

She whipped her head up and said, "Wha—"

"I can't explain. Just pack." When Bex didn't move as fast as Mr. Baxter wanted, he added in a stern voice, "Now."

I looked back at the dresser that just two days ago I had finally unpacked all of my clothes into. With a sigh I slid the top drawer out of its holding with Bex's half-awake aid and dumped it into the first suitcase. We repeated the process three times, moving onto the second suitcase when the first got too full to pack another article of clothing into.

As we finished zipping up the bags Bex and I heard repeated crashing from the White Room. We exchanged a startled expression before Mr. Baxter entered the room again, this time to take us away. Mr. Baxter led us down yet another hidden hallway that was adjoined to the White Room barely giving us time to glance at the wreckage taking place in the once spotless room. At the end of it he opened a thick steel door that led out to a garage. He had Bex and I pile into a nondescript sedan where Mrs. Baxter was already waiting in the passenger seat.

I expected Mr. Baxter to get into the driver's seat but instead he followed me right into the back. I was just about to ask him who was going to drive us when the woman named Fiona opened the driver's door.

Without a word or a smile she swiftly started the ignition and fastened her seatbelt. I didn't even have to look at Bex to know that she was as confused as I was.

Fiona reversed the car quickly. She barely had to look behind her as she guided the sedan past more than a dozen other cars and, for some odd reason, an ice cream truck. Then, with a swift movement of her hands and a whirling motion that left me just a wee bit nauseous, the car was facing right towards an opening garage door. As soon as the door finished opening she grounded her foot on the accelerator and sped us out of the underground base.

Well, almost. We were still underground, traveling along very, _very_ winding tunnels. But my point is clear. The White Room was no more; only a place to be seen through my memories, never my eyes. I twisted in my seat to look out the back window. There was no hope of me seeing the place that I had felt some semblance of peace in, but through the darkness of the tunnel, I could see headlights shining off of the wet walls. Everyone else was evacuating too it seemed.

What was going on?

Almost as though she could read my thoughts, Fiona said, "The agent was a pawn." I didn't really understand what she meant by that but before I could ask she continued, "At 0536 hours, a beacon signaling to an outside source was located within our walls. It was traced back to the captured agent we had been interrogating for the past two weeks."

Bex hesitated before asking, "How wasn't the signal found before?"

Mr. and Mrs. Baxter exchanged a glance but Fiona simply said, "We were unable to locate the signal before because it was programmed to start upon death. Until then it would have appeared to be an ordinary tooth. Apparently, the government has been a little lax getting us the latest equipment finding such things."

My eyes widened. "How did he die?" I asked.

Fiona's eyes narrowed. "Until I confer with my superiors, Ms. Morgan, I'm afraid that is confidential."

Something in her eyes told me that even after she talked with her superiors, I wouldn't want to know what happened to the double agent.

We rode for several hours without stopping, not even to eat. By the time noon rolled around, Bex's and my stomachs were growling loudly. I swore I saw Fiona almost smile once when I covered my stomach with my hands, trying to muffle the embarrassing sound.

At another point, Bex and I finally found out what state we had been in for the past couple of weeks when a sign announced we were now leaving Iowa. And then we entered Minnesota. Bex sighed in frustration. Not knowing where we were headed annoyed her to no end. She had worked up the nerve to ask Fiona about a half an hour into the trip but had been completely ignored. The response from her parents had been similar.

"You know, I'm starting to think that Fiona doesn't even know where we're headed." Bex whispered loudly enough for everyone in the car to hear. She was trying to annoy the answer out of driver. She snuck a glance at Fiona's face through the rearview mirror, but it was as passive as ever.

Finally, as two o'clock arrived, Fiona pulled over at a gas station. She handed us a twenty dollar bill and told us to "knock ourselves out" as she filled the car up with gas. Bex and I rushed into store and immediately became victims of a horrible disease called mouthwatering-syndrome. It's very serious, possibly fatal. I'm not sure I've ever been so glad to see so much junk food in my entire life.

Ten minutes later, bladders empty and arms full, Bex and I exited the rundown gas station. We got back into the sedan and immediately opened our soda cans with satisfying pops. Fiona and Bex's parents rolled their eyes at us as we clanked the cans together and had a competition to see who could fit the most marshmallows in their mouth (Bex managed to get eleven in before she, you know, gagged). Needless to say, it took me a minute to figure out that we weren't moving anywhere.

I gulped down a mouthful of marshmallow. "What are we doing?"

"Waiting." Fiona said. And that's what we did. For an hour and a half we sat in the parking lot of that gas station waiting for only God knows what. An employee came out and tapped on the window and asked if he needed to call a tow truck to take us to a service station but Fiona said that we were just taking a breather. The employee grumbled something under his breath that didn't sound very nice, but still we waited.

Then an Audi pulled up next to us. Its windows were tinted dark and I couldn't see into the car through them but I had a feeling I knew who was behind them. Fiona didn't make a move for several minutes. Then, without warning, she opened her door and jumped out of the car. She entered the store and walked the aisles. For a minute our car was completely silent.

Then, the driver door to the Audi opened and out stepped Tillie. She also walked into the store and walked the aisles, passing Fiona several times. Neither talked, they just stayed near each other, communicating in some way that clearly showed they were a team. A very good team because I unless I hadn't seen the two of them together at the base, I never would have guessed they knew each other. They were covert, they were spies, and they were good.

As Tillie walked to the counter and purchased her snacks, Fiona never once glanced her way. She didn't look at the Audi and she didn't look nervous or unsure of anything. Fiona was like a machine; a lean, mean, killing machine. She went to the bathrooms as Tillie exited the building. She wasn't in sight as Tillie opened my door and smiled at me.

As Tillie had Bex and I gather our things, all I knew was that Fiona was still in the bathrooms. As I got out of the sedan and said goodbye to the Mr. and Mrs. Baxter who were apparently weren't joining us on this leg of the journey, I didn't doubt that one thought. And then of course, I felt like a complete idiot when I slid into the back of the Audi after Bex and saw Fiona in the front seat.

I couldn't believe I hadn't seen her get in the car. I couldn't figure out or put the pieces together of how she managed that. But I stopped caring about the genius that was Fiona when I saw who was sitting behind the passenger seat. Someone I most definitely had not been expecting.

Zachary Goode.

* * *

**So? What do you think?**


	5. Chapter 5

**I only own Tillie and Fiona. I'm not too upset about that though because they're an awesome bunch. **

* * *

Chapter 5 _Heading for Nowhere _(by Jets Overhead)

I guess you could say that the atmosphere in the car was tense. Awkward. Holy-freaking-mother-of-God nerve-racking. At least, that's how it felt to me. After all, it's not every day that you get put in a car with the guy you may or may not be seeing whose mom wants to kidnap you for who-knows-what.

But apparently, only the people in the back seat could feel it because Tillie and Fiona were carrying on like we were just a big happy family traveling to the Mall of America. Wait, were we going to the Mall of America? If so, that sucks because I totally forgot my wallet. Crap.

Anyways, I was glad that Bex was between Zach and me. If not I might have punched him…or kissed him. Probably both.

"So…" Zach said. He looked a little nervous. "Cammie, how have—"

"Shut up," Bex said in a sing-song voice. "You don't get to talk Cam right now."

Zach almost sounded like he was whining when he said, "But why?"

Bex sighed in frustration like it should be totally obvious why he couldn't talk to me, but I was just as confused. "Because, Zachary, if I have my facts right it was your brilliant advice that got us in this position with your whole 'let's run away!' crap. So, while Cammie might not be mad at you, I am. And I really do not want to hear your voice right now." She harrumphed and crossed her arms to solidify her point. Aw, isn't Bex cute? I just wanted to give her a hug!

I had almost forgotten about Tillie and Fiona up front but then I heard a giggle coming from the front and saw Fiona with her hand over her mouth. So she _is_ human. I was starting to wonder. This brought me back to what I had been thinking at the gas station. "So, how long have you two worked together?" I asked.

Tillie shot me a quick grin over her shoulder as she changed lanes. "Long enough."

Fiona explained further, "Tillie was my mentor after I finished my schooling. I guess I just never got up the nerve to go out on my own." She gave a little smile though, as if there was something more going on there.

"So you both went to Gallagher, right?" Bex said. "Just different years."

Tillie gave a laugh. "Fiona went to Gallagher. I didn't." This was the first I had heard about that. I guess I had always just assumed that Tillie was a Gallagher Girl. That maybe her and my mom had butted heads in their school years and that was why they didn't get along very well. Apparently I assumed wrong.

Bex was confused. "So where did you go?" But she was met with both Tillie and Fiona saying, "That's classified."

Tillie looked at Bex through the rearview mirror when she said, "But maybe I'll tell you one day." Instantly, Tillie was put back on Bex's list of idols. That woman knew how to keep people on her side.

However, despite the little chitchat that was going, on there was still a chill to the air. I had questions that I wanted to ask Tillie and Zach, but I had to get them alone first. Although, I wasn't sure I should be allowed in a room alone with Zach. I'm not sure I sure if I could keep my emotions in check.

I glanced over at him as we passed through Minneapolis. He was looking out the window, or was he? The glass reflected just enough that I could see his face and his eyes weren't focused on something a distance away. They were focused on my reflection. He gave me a little smile and I had to fight the blush that wanted to rise to my cheeks.

I looked away. I couldn't let him affect me like this. It wasn't right that he held so much power over me while it felt like he was completely free to do whatever he desired. I wanted to be strong and independent like Gilly, like a real Gallagher Girl.

Suddenly, Tillie spoke up to the entire car, "Did you know the University of Minnesota made the Honeycrisp apple?" The random trivia made me give a strangled laugh that came out sounding like a snort. Which it wasn't, it totally wasn't.

"Really?" Bex said. Then, "Oh my gosh, is that some kind of clue? Are we going to have break some kind of code with that?" She gasped, "Are we going to have to use the chemical compounds and equation used to generate the first Honeycrisp apple tree to disfigure a bomb?"

Zach rolled his eyes, but in all honesty I sort of wanted to hear the answer to that too. Tillie merely sighed and said, "No, Bex. I just thought that the car could use a little…random fact or something. It feels a little cold in here."

Fiona muttered, "Maybe that's because you have the air conditioning on so high." Tillie whipped her head to the side to look at Fiona.

"Excuse me?" She said. "I'm sorry I prefer to be cool rather than feel like a lobster who has found himself in the chef's favorite pot! I mean, you remember the Sahara mission, Fiona."

"Oh, I remember." Fiona said. "That was the last time I ever felt my fingers in a car ride with you." And thus, Fiona and Tillie, the two agents who I assumed were our bodyguards until school started up, started bickering with each other.

I tried to scoot farther into my seat; I couldn't deal with the only two adults in the car fighting right now. But Bex started getting just as mad as the two of them. "Hey, hey," She said, but they didn't hear her. "HEY!" She yelled.

The two of them looked back at her briefly. Then, Tillie took a sharp turn and I saw where we were headed. I had been right; our destination was the Mall of America. Bex looked out the window and squealed. "I can't believe it! Why didn't anyone tell me we were coming here? I would have brought extra cash." She clapped and practically smothered me as she tried to get a better look at the giant mall through the window.

We parked in the Hawaii parking ramp and walked into the mall. In all my life, I'd never once been to the big MOA. From the looks of it neither had Bex. "Can we go the park? Or…or the IMAX? Oh my gosh, this is so cool!" She grabbed a random hat and threw it on. Then she looked in a mirror and laughed at the ridiculousness of it. I was starting to question her sanity.

Fiona flicked the hat off Bex's head and said, "Baxter, keep moving. And don't be British." Bex's grin slid down a little bit as she looked behind her at the hat that still lay on the ground, the bouquet of peacock feathers on it suddenly seeming a little droopy.

Tillie took the head of our procession as Fiona took back. Somehow, Zach ended up walking in front of me with Bex to my right. I couldn't help but notice as we continued walking that Zach's butt was looking really, uh, in shape.

Tillie checked her watch as we neared Camp Snoopy or Nickelodeon Universe or whatever it was being called that year. She signaled for Fiona to come up to the front with her and they walked a couple of steps away from us. Which sucked because it meant I couldn't hear them, and I still hadn't learned how to lip-read.

But then it didn't suck because Bex was so focused on trying to covertly listen in on their conversation that she didn't pay much attention when Zach turned towards me. His hands were in his pockets and when he looked at me, he looked a little sheepish. I noticed his hair was longer than it had been almost two months ago, and he looked tired. Just like I had been when Tillie found me.

"So," I said, scuffing the toe of my shoe on the ground. "What have you been up to?"

Zach shrugged. "Not much." He said, "I've been traveling."

"Yeah?" I said like I wouldn't have known unless he'd told me. "Where to?"

"Around." He glanced over at Tillie and Fiona. "How long have you been with Henderson and Phillips?"

"I've known Tillie my whole life." I said. "Why were you in the car with Tillie?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "What is this? Twenty questions?"

"I believe some people call it an interrogation." I said, taking a step closer to him. "It's a common tactic used to get information out of unwilling people."

Zach gave me a look like he thought I was weird, but it also sort of seemed to say he'd deal with my oddball-ness if it came with me. I smiled up at him and nudged his arm to make him smile back at me. He did and then he looked me in the eyes with this really intense gaze that made my breath hitch. Damn his eyes. They're so hypnotic…

He leaned in closer and I was almost positive that he was going to kiss me with Bex and my bodyguards just a couple yards away, but then he pulled back and Tillie was suddenly standing next to me. She gave Zach a fierce glare that I swear made him take a step back. Tillie put her hand on my shoulder. "Ready to keep moving?" She asked.

I nodded and she said, "It'll only be a couple more minutes before we enter the base. It'll just be temporary though. We'll get you to Gallagher as soon as we can."

She started walking again and I hurried to catch up with her. "But I thought I wasn't going back to Gallagher until the school year started."

"That was the original plan, Cam, but certain events have made us reevaluate the situation." Tillie kept looking straight ahead rather than turning to look in my eyes.

"You mean the agent, right? The one who was caught and interrogated." Tillie shot me a look that clearly said to shut up, but I didn't really feel like it. "How did he die, Tillie?"

I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and turned my head to see Fiona shaking her head. I pursed my lips. I was so sick of being kept out of the loop! By then, Tillie had led us to the log cabin ride. I didn't even bother to tell her that we didn't have the tickets to ride it because I guessed that she knew what she was doing.

We had to wait in line. When we got to the front, Fiona swiped a card underneath the ticket scanner and the ride manager looked at the screen before escorting us to a log car. We loaded up, Tillie and Bex up front and Fiona in back which meant Zach and I had to squeeze into the middle seat together. To fit comfortably, his arm was behind my back which reminded me vaguely of a move a guy would make if he were on a date. Which, in turn, made me wonder what the heck were Zach and I? Were we dating or was there something else going on here?

The ride took us into a tunnel and upward and then back down. As we went up a second hill I started to think that maybe this was just a fun ride to get our minds over the insanity of what was going on. Then we entered another tunnel, and the world fell out from beneath us. Literally.

* * *

**Sorry if there are some typos in there. The little buggers always seem to slip right through the cracks (or, well, my poor eyesight).**


	6. Chapter 6

**Here's chapter numero seis. Our favorite group of teenage spies-in-training belong entirely to Ally Carter. No matter how much I wish I had thought of them...*Sniffle***

* * *

Chapter 6. _Alice (Underground) _(by Avril Lavigne)

It was pitch black as we fell down, down, down. No one screamed though, even when chilly water rained down on us. Not even when we landed with a _splat!_ into a deep pool of water and got wet once again. I shivered in my soaked clothes and felt Zach's arm tighten around me. Somehow, in the dark we had gotten even closer, and I was now pressed up against his and, uh, other things.

I pushed as far away as I could which brought a chorus of "Hey!"s from everyone as the boat rocked back and forth treacherously. I mumbled an apology and tried to settle down but I'd like to see someone else in my position go all calm and collected. I was sitting next to a _really_ cute boy in the dark. And is that his hand on my knee? Why yes, it is.

I did my best not to squirm, especially since I had had years of training that taught me how to be still. But still, I felt this tingling in me that was almost ticklish, it just made me shift around. The boat rocked again, and everyone gripped the sides of it. Then, there was a sound like groaning and the boat caught on to something. It bumped us forward and without thinking, I gripped Zach's arm.

The tracks carried us fast, at first staying straight and then veering right and left until, despite my excellent navigational skills, I was starting to get a little dizzy. I tried to keep track of the turns but when the boat took a corkscrew turn and spun us like a whirlpool for over a minute, I knew I was utterly lost. Obviously, this base was pretty classified if they went to this much trouble to keep their whereabouts relatively unknown.

After half an hour of being tugged every which way, the boat finally started going straight again. It was still pitch black so I couldn't make out anything. But by the sounds of Tillie's echoing voice, we had entered a tunnel. "Is everyone okay?" She whispered. Fiona and Zach mumbled their assurances, and I nodded though she couldn't see it.

Bex was the one that said, "That was bloody awesome! Seriously. Best ride _ever_!" We all laughed which helped to lighten the atmosphere. Another thing that helped lighten things up was the fact that the tunnel was getting brighter. I could now make out the glistening walls on either side of me. If I stretched my arm out far enough, I could brush my fingertips against the left wall.

Finally, we reached the end of tunnel and were blinded by the sudden amount of light that shined in our dilated eyes. When the spots in my eyes faded a bit, I could see where we had ended up. We all stepped out of our transportation and took in our surroundings as the tunnel behind us got sealed off.

Other than the fact that in place of stores there were frosted, missile-proof glass windows and doors (that I assumed led to highly classified labs) the room looked sort of similar to the mall somewhere above us. There were several floors of walkways connected by escalators and there was a big open area like there had been we walked into the park area of the mall. There were several large hallways branching off from the main area that dozens of people were walking along.

When I looked up at the ceiling I could see the sky through the glass roofs. My brow furrowed because I was sure that we were deeper underground than just a few stories—I mean, we did fall for a pretty long time. Beside me, Zach whistled and then whispered in my ear, "Holographic mirrors. Pretty fancy-schmansy."

Apparently he didn't whisper quietly enough because Tillie called from a few feet away, "Yeah, well, when you are as good at what you do as the people down here—" She looked at Zach and me. "—The Agency tends to reward you."

"Even if it is just with a little fake sunlight." Fiona said. Someone walked past her and said hello but she didn't pay attention. Instead, she turned to Tillie and said, "We should keep moving, Til. Get them in their rooms so _we_ can get to our meeting."

Tillie rolled her eyes but started walking. Unlike Fiona, whenever someone said a greeting to her she stopped and said one back which led to us stopping almost constantly. Eventually, Fiona got so fed up with it that she took the lead and sent Tillie to the back. Tillie immediately fell behind but Fiona kept going on with Bex, Zach, and me in tow.

She led us down several hallways until we reached a plain wood door. It was here that she paused and looked around. Then she entered and ushered us inside. Once we were settled, Fiona locked the door and turned to face us. Her face was emotionless, professional as she said, "You'll stay here for a few days before we can transport you safely—and quickly—to Gallagher. And by here, Ms. Baxter, I do mean this room." She stopped and cocked her head as if she'd heard something. Which I'm sure she had because I had too. She shrugged it off though and continued. "You are not allowed to go in the Main Areas nor any of the laboratories. There are two bedrooms and two bathrooms in here. And everyday, three times a day, you will have food brought to you."

I heard a noise again, louder this time, coming from behind me. I whipped my head around but there was nothing there. Fiona walked around the couch Bex and I had sat down on and flung open the nearest door. I saw a flash of dark hair and then my aunt getting pinned to the ground. "Hey, squirt." She said. Well, more like groaned because Fiona had wrapped her right arm—her weaker one after the shooting—behind her back in a perfect Broken Chicken maneuver.

"Aunt Abby!" I shot up from my seat and went to push Fiona off of her, but it was useless. Abby was already slipping out of Fiona's grip so I settled on giving her a hug instead. Abby chuckled as she hugged me back. When I let her go she asked, "So, how was your vacation, girly?"

I shrugged. "Fruitless and pointless."

Aunt Abby fixed me with one of her rare stern looks. "Don't ever say a mission is pointless. There's always a meaning to it, whether you see it or not." I shrugged again, not wanting to talk about it and she let it go.

She looked behind me. "Hey there, Baxter. Goode." She didn't leave her gaze on Zach for more than a second, but it was long enough for me to see that she obviously was not trusting of anyone related to Zach's mom. "So did you all get the grand tour?"

I shook my head as Bex said a mournful, "No."

"Seriously? That's just wrong!" She looked at Fiona who was standing now. "How could you not give them the tour of _The Hometown_?" She emphasized 'The Hometown' as if incredulous that anyone wouldn't be shown all around it.

Fiona crossed her arms and frowned. "My orders wouldn't allow it. And the Clearance Deputies certainly wouldn't either."

"Oh please, Arthur owes me a favor. I totally saved his ass in Guam a couple summers back." Aunt Abby started heading towards the door that led into the hallway. "And as for orders, I've always been one to see them more as guidelines. Wouldn't you agree, Phillips?" My aunt quirked an eyebrow at Fiona who was frowning deeply.

Finally, Fiona sighed in resignation. "Fine. Whisk them away into mischief." She plopped down on the couch I had vacated just a moment earlier. "But keep in mind that I just got your dear niece out of one sticky situation. I would prefer not to have to rescue her from another." Aunt Abby just laughed and opened the door for Bex, Zach, and me. As I left the room, there was one major question running through my head right then. _What did Aunt Abby have on Fiona?_

_

* * *

_

**Give me your thoughts. I'd like to know what _you_ like about the story so far. :)**_  
_


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7. _Secrets_ (by OneRepublic)

The tour Abby took us on was indescribable. I'd never seen anything quite like The Hometown Base. Everything seemed to work like clockwork; the people worked, walked, and talked in sync. The base was larger than I had originally thought. Hallways with dozens of doors along them branched off of the main corridors which twisted and turned, looping into each other. There were dead ends and circles every now and then giving me the impression that The Hometown was more a maze than a base.

Nothing was labeled. The agents who worked here had to rely on their memories entirely to get around. The only way Bex, Zach, and I knew what anything was because Aunt Abby and her buddy, Arthur the Clearance Deputy, pointed things out to us. At one door, Arthur told us, "That's what is officially called the Vehicular Experimental Lab. The agents here like to joke that that's where they go when they need to blow off some steam." At another door, Abby said, "That's the Integration Department. No one is allowed in except the agents who work in the department. When someone's cover has been compromised, the Integrators are the ones who assist in cleaning up the mess."

"Why are they called Integrators?" Bex asked.

Abby shrugged, "I guess because, originally, their job had an entirely different meaning. As their missions started changing, their name didn't."

The tour went on for a total of one hour forty-seven minutes and eleven seconds. There was never a moment when Abby and Arthur weren't pointing out something new. I had heard of over a dozen government departments that I had no recollection of hearing about before. And we had only looked at the first two floors.

"Tomorrow," Abby said as she dropped us back off at our quarters. "I'll take you to see the third floor."

"Not the fourth or fifth?" I said.

Abby smiled. "Even I can't get the Clearance Deputies to allow three teenagers up there. You'll just have to wait until you get older—and higher clearance—to find out what lies above." Her smile shifted into a smirk as she waved goodbye, promising to see us the next day.

The room was dark when the three of us entered it. Fiona still seemed to be at whatever meeting she was talking about earlier. Bex quickly excused herself to take a shower which left me alone…with Zach.

Neither of us says anything at first. A clock ticked on the coffee table. It ticked eighty-seven times before Zach spoke up. "So how long have you really known Matilda Henderson?"

I gave him a quizzical look. "I've known her since I was seven. She used to babysit me whenever my parents were gone."

He couldn't seem to really comprehend this. "But she's so…" He trailed off like he didn't know exactly how to describe my old family friend.

"She's what?" I asked. I crept closer (because, if I was being honest with myself, I really wanted to see how his biceps felt). "Kind, courteous, caring, sacrificing, one of my oldest friends?"

"Cruel." He finished his sentence. Its end sent me back a couple of steps.

"Cruel?" I said, incredulous. "There a lot of ways to describe Tillie, but _cruel_ is not one of them."

He snorted in disbelief. Yes, snorted. "Obviously, you don't know her very well."

"I've known her for over half my life!" I exclaimed. My voice was starting to rise, but I was finding it hard to care whether or not someone heard me. I was more focused on the fact that Zach was standing a few feet away from me and I was very close to closing that space so I could strangle his soon-to-be-sorry ass.

"I grew up hearing all about her, Cammie." He said. His voice was rising too, though not quite as fast as mine. "My mother keeps track of people who could be a threat to her. And you want to know who's been at the top of that list for _years_? Henderson!"

"Well, then maybe that's a good thing!" I yelled. "Your mom isn't exactly a nice woman, Zach. She's trying to kidnap me for God's sake!"

He groaned in frustration. "You don't understand. Cammie, she's dangerous. Not just to people like my mother, but to everyone. She isn't signed."

"You aren't even making sense anymore. Of course she's signed. My father mentored her. She's CIA."

"No, she's not. She's freelance. Always has been and always will be because _she can't be trusted_. She'll go to whoever pays her most."

My eyes narrowed. "Are you saying that my old _babysitter_ is a _hit man?_"

"Yes," Zach exclaimed in exasperation. "That is exactly what I'm saying."

"You…you…" I couldn't find words to express my anger at him right at that moment. I blurted out the first thing that came to me. "Why do you even care who I spend my time with?" I meant for it to come out sounding strong and furious, but it sounded more like four-year-old about to throw a fit over not getting a candy bar.

Zach walked towards me quickly. I tried to step away, but he caught my hands. He looked down at them and rubbed his thumbs across my knuckles as he said, "Because, Gallagher Girl, I care about you."

For some reason, I could feel my eyes starting to prickle with tears when he said that. When Zach brought his face back up to look at me, I turned my head to the side. I tried telling myself that I was almost crying because I was so frustrated. But the truth was more shameful, more embarrassing. Especially for a spy. I was tearing up because even when I was overwhelmingly mad at Zach, I also felt as though we were the only two people in the whole world. I felt weightless and free even countless stories underground in a small, cramped room with an oversized couch. I was in love with the boy.

Stupid boy.

I heard the shower turn off and became aware that the world hadn't ended outside of the room. I pulled my hands away from Zach's grip and spun around. Before he could grab me back and make me face him, I darted to the door Bex had gone through earlier. I shut the door behind me, clicked the lock, and slid down against it. I curled up against it; knees to my chest, arms on knees, head on arms.

Bex came out of the bathroom a couple of minutes later and found me still sitting like that. She saw the tears that had somehow escaped out of the corners of my eyes and ushered me to the bathroom. She told me take a shower and cool off. "You'll think better once you get a shower and are out of those clothes. They're still a little damp from the log ride." She gave me a little smile that almost looked like a smile you give to a sick relative who has completely gone off their rocker. Was that what I looked like to her?

I did feel better after I showered and changed into clean clothes. However, I didn't feel like my usual self. If I was being honest, it had been a long time since I felt like my normal self. The last time I remembered feeling like that person was probably the summer after sophomore year. And even then, it hadn't held out.

But I guess that was the price I was going to have to pay for the life I'd chosen. For the first time, I could understand why my parents might not have be completely sold on sending me to Gallagher. But at the same time I didn't care. I wanted this life—and I was starting to think Zach, as well.

He made me so angry and I wanted to pummel him half the time because of his vagueness. But when I was with him I always felt as if I could be something more. Not just a girl who went to a spy school but a girl who could make a difference and define her own life. I never felt like I was in the present with him but as if I was getting a glimpse into the life I could have.

I heard Tillie and Fiona get back from their meeting. They called us to dinner, and we had Chinese food (the real kind, not the fast food kind). Afterwards, I offered to help clean up, but Tillie waved me off. "Go rest or something," she said. "Fiona can help me."

The rest of the night passed with very little excitement. Bex and I slept together in the same room again but the beds were beside each other instead of bunked. Tillie and Fiona slept on the pull out mattress on the couch, and Zach got the other bedroom. I fell asleep quickly in the complete darkness of my room and didn't stir awake until I heard chatter outside my door. I recognized Aunt Abby's voice even through the thick door. "Is she awake?"

"No." That was Tillie. I heard a noise like a fork on plate. They must be eating breakfast.

My aunt sighed. "That's good, I suppose. She deserves to sleep in a bit after all that's happened."

"Any news on Joe?" Tillie asked. I pushed the covers off of me and crept to the door. I had been thinking about how Mr. Solomon was doing as well.

Another sigh, this one sadder. "He's recovering. Rachel said that he's woken up a couple of times but not for long enough periods for him to say anything."

Fiona spoke up this time. "That's to be expected. He had some very bad burns."

"And a nasty fall, I hear." Tillie added.

There was a pause before any of them said anything. Then Abby said, "Does Cammie know?" Do I know what?

Tillie obviously understood what my aunt meant. "No, she doesn't. I never told her, and I doubt that Matthew or Rachel ever did either."

"But Zach knows. How can we be sure he hasn't told her?" Abby asked urgently.

I heard the shifting of covers and glanced at Bex. She had woken up too and was moving towards the door to hear the conversation outside of our room better. Fiona said, "We can't be sure he hasn't told her. But we can be sure he hasn't told her everything."

"What do you mean?" Abby asked. "If he knew, why wouldn't he tell her everything?"

"Because Zach doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does." Tillie said. I don't know she did it but she managed to make her voice sound like she was smiling. "His mother's informants were only ever able to give her half the story because that's all anyone hears about me. Half the story."

My eyes widened. Could what Zach told me yesterday have been true? And if so, OH…MY…GOD!


	8. Chapter 8

**This one is a bit longer than my usual one. I got a little impatient to get them to a certain place. I think I'm starting to figure out where I'm heading with this so hopefully I can keep updating every couple of days.**

**Disclaimer: I get Tillie and Fiona, but Cammie and her loverboy and co. are Ally Carter's. Sad, I know.**

**Also, I just wanted to add here that any advice you have on my writing (or the story) is greatly appreciated. One of the big reasons I'm posting this story rather than just keeping it a Word Document is to hear your input. Thanks. :)**

* * *

Chapter 8. _Home Sweet Home _(by Those Dancing Days)

I didn't hear the end of that conversation. I didn't hear where it was headed because just before I felt that the mystery that was Tillie was about to be dispelled, Abby said, "I think I'll just go check on Cammie." I heard the grating of her chair on the tile floor, and I bolted back into my bed. To my left, I could see Bex doing the same.

Abby opened the door right as Bex and I finished getting situated in our beds. I could hear her quiet footsteps as stepped between the two beds. She apparently hadn't put her hair up as I felt it tickling my shoulder. Then she placed her hand on my upper arm, and I was sure that she knew I had heard her conversation with Tillie and Fiona.

Or maybe she didn't know because when she whispered in my ear, it honestly sounded like she was worried about disrupting my sleep. "Cammie?"

I pretended to stir a little and stretched out onto my stomach. I focused on keeping my breath slow and even. Abby leaned over me again and shook me a little bit this time. "Squirt, wake up."

I gave a groan like I didn't want to get up. "What time is it?" I tried to coat my voice with sleepiness. I don't know how well I pulled it off.

"About nine. Why don't you get some breakfast and I'll wake Bex up, okay?" I sat up slowly, and she smoothed the hair on the top of my head. As I tiptoed out of the room so as not to "wake" Bex up, I snuck a glance at my aunt. How many other secrets was she—and all the other adults I placed my trust in—keeping from me?

Several days passed. I kept some distance from Tillie (while keeping an eye on her of course) and I avoided Zach. I didn't figure anything out from Tillie, no matter how hard I tried to burrow my eyes through her skull into her brain. I avoided Zach because I knew that if I talked to him I would either say something really embarrassing or tell him that he was right and I was wrong. And right now, the last thing I needed to hear was him saying "I told you so."

Then, the day we had been waiting for came. Tillie woke me up by jumping on my bed. As I tried to calm my heart's rapid beating, she squealed and clapped her hands as she told us to get dressed because we were heading to Gallagher. "I am _so_ excited!" She said over breakfast. "I've never been there, you know. Obviously, I've heard all about it and seen aerial shots of its grounds when I first got my Level Four clearance, but I've never seen its interior. What's it like?"

She went on and on like that all morning, barely giving us time to respond. Finally, Fiona landed a slap to her face. When Tillie gasped in indignation, Fiona merely shrugged and said, "You are hurting my calm."

I, myself, felt nearly as excited as Tillie looked. It's odd how much more I missed Gallagher than I did last summer. Sure, The Hometown Base was awesome (especially level three because, hello, the departments up there each had their own Ben & Jerry's ice cream machine) but Gallagher was my home, the one place in the world where I was sure of my safety. Plus, I really wanted to see my mom again.

Which made me think of something. As Tillie and Fiona led us to an elevator that would lead us to the Hometown's parking garage, I leaned into Aunt Abby and asked, "Is my mom mad about me, you know, leaving?"

Abby bit her lip but answered my question. "She was at first. But she was always more worried than angry. Don't worry; I'm sure she's fine with it now. You proved you could handle the life of a spy. You'll be good." She sounded convincing enough, but I couldn't trust that she was being honest. There was a little something in her eyes that said Mom had not taken my leaving very well at all.

As we piled in the car, Abby hung back. I buckled myself in the middle of the back seat in between Bex and Fiona. I looked over at Abby as she stayed just outside the car door. "You aren't coming with us, are you?"

She gave a little, sad smile. "Afraid not, Squirt. But I promise to visit soon, okay?" She looked at Tillie who had positioned herself in the driver's seat. "Someone's got to keep that one in check."

"Hey, I resent that." Tillie's smile didn't match her words. Abby just rolled her eyes like she didn't care but gave a little smile. Then she looked at Zach in the passenger's seat. Oddly enough, her eyes seemed to soften as she said, "Don't get into any trouble, Zachary."

He nodded and I got confused. Just a few months ago when we broke into Blackthorne, it was pretty obvious that Aunt Abby didn't trust Zach. Now it almost seemed like Abby was truly worried about his well being (not just because of orders). I didn't get much time to think on that though because Tillie was already reversing out of the parking garage. I tried to send one last wave towards my aunt, but I couldn't be sure she saw it.

And then, as the car twisted and turned up a steep incline, Tillie turned the radio dial and music filled the air around me. If I listened hard enough, I could hear our suitcases clunking in the trunk. To my right, Fiona's index finger tapped relentlessly against the door handle. Bex was already dozing off again as she had been up late reading a first edition copy of _Encountering A Thief's World_, a book published in the 1930's by Victoria Benson. As Bex said, "She was one of the most amazing spies to have ever lived. She successfully infiltrated the most renowned and dangerous thief family of her time. And brought. Them. _Down_."

In any case, Bex had been obsessed with the book ever since Abby took us to the Hometown's library and saw it in the glass cabinet in the middle of the giant room. I'm pretty sure she'd only gotten five hours of sleep since she picked it up off of its stand.

We were in the car for about an hour when Tillie parked the car outside of an airport. She turned to look in the backseat. Her gaze lingered on Bex who was spread out as much a person could be in the limited amount of space. That girl was such a space hog. Tillie gave an evil smile and then screamed, "BAXTER!"

Bex shot up so fast her head hit the roof of the car. The expression on her face was enough to make everyone else in the car go into hysterics. Bex tried to tell us to put a cork in it and that it really wasn't that funny, but when it became clear that we weren't listening she just shook her head and crossed her arms. Finally, we got ourselves under control and got out of the car.

It was nice to have room to stretch out. I brought my hands together over my head stretched them towards the sky. In my peripheral vision I could Zach doing the same. As he did that, his shirt rode up the slightest bit and I could see the beginnings of a very well-kept six pack. Yummy.

I forced my eyes up to his face and saw him smirking at me. I scowled at him and looked away just in time to keep him from seeing the blush that came to my cheeks. I looked towards Tillie who was now grabbing our things out of the trunk.

"Come on, gang," She said. She dropped each of our suitcases at our feet. "A plane waits for no one." She paused. "Well, except maybe the pilot. But I'm not flying this plane."

Fiona grunted. "I sure hope not."

"Oh ha ha ha, Fiona. That's so funny," Tillie said as she made a face at her partner. "Not. Stop rubbing that in my face. It was one time for God's sake!"

Fiona laughed as she picked her suitcase up and headed to the building that proclaimed itself to be the Rochester Municipal Airport. "One time that nearly cost me my life. Seriously, why did you have to take out those pilots? We had to figure out how to land that damn thing _as_ we were landing it."

"They had guns!" Tillie replied. She ran to catch up to Fiona despite the fact that she was wearing very unstable stilettos. "Most pilots don't carry guns."

"How would you know?" Zach asked. Tillie shot him a look that said to shut up if he wasn't going to help her case.

Fiona sighed as we walked into the building. "I'm not going to have this argument with you again, Tillie. We've had it a million times. You claim to know exactly what you were doing while I say that you nearly crashed a Boeing 747."

Tillie pursed her lips. "I never said I knew _exactly_ what I was doing." We placed our suitcases on the line that would take it to the plane. "Just that I could do it."

-.-.-.-

PROS AND CONS OF

FLYING BACK TO SCHOOL

WITH YOUR OLD BABYSITTER

(A list by Cameron Morgan)

PRO: You get to sit next to your old babysitter who happens to be an amazing spy and tells you about the time she and her partner took out a dozen enemy agents on a Boeing 747 (including the pilots) and managed to keep 200 innocent passengers from finding out.

CON: On your right is someone who may or may not be blurring the line when it comes to missions, and on your left is the boy you can't stop thinking about and who is way too observant for his own good.

PRO: Airline pillows are surprisingly comfy.

CON: The only good place to put the pillow is on one of the shoulders on either side of you. And while both of them are fine with you sleeping on them, you totally aren't up for it right now.

PRO: When you give up on sleeping there's a movie playing that you can watch.

CON: The plot not only reminds you vaguely of your own life, but the girl's love interest bears a striking resemblance to the boy next to you.

-.-.-.-

The flight took several hours and included a switch in Atlanta. When we finally landed in Richmond I wasn't surprised to find a limo waiting for us. It was similar to the one that had taken Bex and I back to Gallagher last semester in the snese that it was bullet-proof and missile-proof (and, I was guessing water-compatible).

The ride was quiet. I was glad to have space to relax in without bumping into Zach or Tillie, so I was no good for conversation. Tillie was up front with the driver, and Zach was staring out the tinted windows, brooding. Bex and Fiona were the only ones making noise in the back. They had bonded over the flight and were whispering back and forth about who-knows-what.

The smooth riding of the car lulled me into sleep and the next thing I knew the gates of Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women were opening to the limo. I sat up straight as we rolled along the school's driveway. My muscles were cramped and I gave a little wince as they stretched with my spine.

But then I saw my mother waiting just outside Gallagher's doors and I knew that I didn't know anything about hurting yet. Its not that she looked horrible or angry; in fact, she looked as clean and prim as usual. But there was just a certain set to her face that made me think back to the time when I was six and she discovered I ate an entire 16 ounce bag of M&M's for a midnight snack. At that time she had looked worried about my aching stomach. She had the same look in her eyes now but I knew her worry was a lot more serious this time around.

The limo came to a stop and Tillie popped out of the car. I saw her rush forward and hug my mom. I'm pretty sure my mother was as shocked as me, but she accepted it all the same. Then Fiona opened the door in the back and I knew I had to face my mom sometime. Might as well be now. Right?

I stepped out of the car and took in Gallagher Academy. It didn't look any different than it had two months ago, but it felt different. Before, it had started to feel like a prison. But now I realized the outside world can be just as confining. My school and home embraced me and with that exhilarating feeling of homecoming I walked towards my mother (and quite possibly, my doom from the way her eyes were glaring into mine).


	9. Chapter 9

**I wanted to thank everyone for all the reviews. Honestly, they mean a lot to me and help me get through the spots in this story when I just want to give up.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Gallagher Girls series. I wish I did. Seriously. That would be a dream come true.**

* * *

Chapter 9. _The Boys Are Back In Town _(by Thin Lizzy)

The walk to my mother's office was quiet and tense. Zach's sleeve brushed against my arm and I fought the instinct to lean in closer. Mom was ahead of Zach and me. The sound of her heels reverberated through the empty Hall of History. My mother opened the door to her office and I went in, sitting down on the couch. Zach followed me, but Mom didn't sit down at her desk. Instead she started pacing in front of it.

Back and forth, back and forth she went for almost a quarter of an hour. I opened my mouth to ask her if she was okay, but she shot me a glance that I interpreted as "Don't even". Finally, Mom stopped walking and turned to face the couch. She put her hands on her hips and her lips into a paper-thin line. Suddenly, I was wishing that she hadn't stopped pacing.

Especially when the first words that I heard come out of her mouth in over two months were, "What in all that is good and _sane_ were you thinking, Cameron!"

I don't deny that I shrunk a little bit into the couch as she said that. I mean, seriously, who wouldn't? The woman standing in front of me—and scolding me—was the same spy rumored to have jumped out of a jet 10,000 feet in the air without a parachute in order to catch a rogue agent with plans to blow up the Hoover Dam.

"Not only did you run away from campus while there are people out there trying to _kidnap _you, but you didn't tell any of your friends or your _mother _about it!" Her eyes were glaring into mine, and she was now pointing at me. "And then, here's the kicker, you left a trail. Clear as day!"

At this I stopped trying to become one with the couch and sat up straight. "What? I did not!" But in my head, I was backtracking through all the towns I had stopped at. The places I'd eaten at and slept in. I had used all the textbook tactics and some of the more unknown methods to avoid cameras and the need to show my ID. Yes, I was sure Mom was just trying to freak me out—and then I realized what I had missed.

I closed my eyes and suppressed a groan. My mom said, "You see now? You weren't ready, Cammie!"

I opened my eyes to see my mother's eyes had softened, and Zach was looking like he had no idea what was going on. "I forgot the sheets." In the time that I had been on the road, I had gone around every single hotel room and wiped down all the surfaces and vacuumed up all the hairs on the bed and in the bathroom. But I had forgotten that once a fingerprint gets on a sheet, it can stay for several runs through the washer.

My mom nodded. When I looked at her I could see that she was talking to me as a student rather than a daughter. "You didn't have the adequate items for the mission and therefore, left a trail. You're lucky we kept up to speed with your movements or someone else might have gotten to you before Matilda." My mind flashed back to night Tillie found me and the agent we had seen. Very good, indeed.

"You forgot the sheets, Gallagher Girl?" Zach said, tilting his head toward me. "I thought you were better than that."

I shot him a look that could kill (if only Dr. Fibs had developed a prototype for it already) but his words ended up causing him more pain than me because my mother turned on him. "And you, Zachary. Do you really want to know how we found you?"

His eyes widened a bit (probably because the sight of my mom when her anger is directed at you is one of the scariest things anyone could go through) and he shook his head a bit. But Mom continued on, "We found on a camera. An _ATM_ camera!"

At this I just had to turn to Zach and throw is words back at him. "Really, Zach? I thought you were better than that." He frowned at me, but I just smirked.

In front of me, my mother sighed. She ran her hands over her face and her anger seemed to melt away a bit. When she looked back at me and Zach she sounded older as she said, "Don't ever do that again. Either of you."

That was what was worst about that conversation. How weak my mother looked when she said that. Rachel Morgan is a lot of things, but she is definitely not a weak person.

Mom let Zach and I go after that but not before saying that if we wanted to visit, Mr. Solomon was sleeping in infirmary. When we walked out of her office, I saw Bex standing by Gilly's sword. She raised her eyebrows in questioning but I just shrugged. I'd tell her about what Mom said later.

The three of us went immediately to the infirmary. Mr. Solomon was there, like my mother had said. His bruises had faded and almost all of his bandages were gone. If I looked closely, I could see a faint scar that covered most of the left side of his neck. I thought back to the first time I saw him after we got back from Blackthorne and what Townsend had said.

"Is he going to have to change his face, you think?" I asked. Bex looked at me and then back at Mr. Solomon's face. The idea of him getting a face change seemed to make her really sad (I know it made me sad. Hotness like that doesn't grow on trees, you know).

Zach just shrugged. "Probably not. So long as he doesn't go walking into any government bases at least." This consoled Bex some but I was still saddened. Mr. Solomon was, according to what Agent Townsend had told MI6, dead. It made me wonder how much his life would change once he woke up.

-.-.-.-

The rest of the summer rolled by smoothly. Mom decided to forgive me after a couple days of me giving her the puppy dog eyes. Zach, Tillie, and Fiona ended up staying which led to some very interesting late nights of Truth Or Dare. It also led to Mr. Solomon having almost constant company as we all checked in on him regularly.

It was nice having Tillie around all the time. Not only could we catch up on everything we had missed in the five years we hadn't seen each other but I could also keep an eye on her. I hadn't yet forgotten my argument with Zach or the conversation I had heard that next morning.

However, Tillie remained as mysterious as she had always been. Except now I noticed the mysteriousness. Before, I had only seen the babysitter who loved to laugh and have a good time and just so happened to be a spy. Now I saw the woman who had donned the most flawless cover I had ever seen. Sometimes I felt I was just being paranoid as I tried to find the double-meaning in her words. Surely, Tillie really was good if she acted like it that much.

But I couldn't stop the nagging feeling that there was something she was keeping from me. And I really wanted to know what it was. Bex was in the same boat as me. Tillie and Fiona had become her idols and she was convinced that she wanted to follow in their footsteps and be their apprentice when she graduated. The thing was, she didn't know where those footsteps led to and thus, was very eager to help me find out more about them.

August came to a close and Bex and I still hadn't made much progress on our research. We had almost decided to put the whole thing on hold when the day our sisters arrived came around, bringing Macey and Liz with them.

When they got here the first thing we did was hug and ask how everyone's summer was. The second thing was to fill them in on Tillie. Liz's eyes lit up with the idea of having an actual reason to break into Langley and Macey got excited because any type of mission seemed to excite her nowadays. That girl was turning into such a spy.

We holed up in our room until dinner time came. As we walked through the halls, the realization that this was our senior year finally struck me. After this year, I might never see some of these people again. The definite possibility of that made me squeeze my three best friends closer as we walked into the Grand Hall. Bex and Macey just gave me weird looks, but Liz seemed to understand what I was doing and hugged me back.

This started off a whole string of hugs as we sat down at the table. Mick and Eva started hugging, and Tina started blubbering into her napkin to Anna about how much she valued their friendship. It was something that was both sweet because it showed just how close we had all become and disturbing because, hello, we're spies and don't go spewing our emotions out all over the kitchen floor.

We all got ourselves under control just in time for the staff to come in. As I suspected, when they sat down there was one open seat. I wondered who was going to be taking Mr. Solomon's place as our CoveOps teacher now.

The chatter in the Grand Hall died out as my mother stood to make announcements. She smiled at everyone in the room as she said, "To our newcomers, I welcome you. Please feel as comfortable here as you do at home. To our returning sisters, due to the events of last year there will be some changes. However, this is still the same Gallagher Academy that you know and love." My mom paused and seemed to take in the seat that Mr. Solomon had sat at for a year and a half. "Unfortunately, Mr. Solomon will not be coming back to work with us. Instead I would like to present our new Covert Operations teacher, Ms. Matilda Henderson."

My eyes widened and I gaped as the doors at the end of the room swung open to reveal Tillie. She was dressed in a fitted pencil skirt with a peasant blouse tucked in. She almost looked like a real teacher with her hair pulled up in a tight bun and her sensible heels.

As Tillie walked down the aisle toward the staff's table, every eye was fixed on her. I could see why because while Tillie took on the appearance of a teacher very well, there was something about her that just screamed field agent. And if she was so suited for field work, why was she taking a teaching position? Hmmm, I wonder. I saw a couple of people glance at me from the corner of their eyes and knew they were thinking along the same lines as me.

My mother continued as if all us were still paying her any attention, "One other change might come as more of a shock. As you upperclassmen surely remember, last semester we had a visiting student end his junior year with us." The senior table suddenly fixated themselves on my mom's words. "I'm happy to say that Zachary will be joining us again this year. I expect that you treat him with the same respect you show to your sisters. I know I won't be disappointed."

Was it just me, or did her gaze seem to linger on me longer than anybody else? Then, as I felt someone slide in between Liz and me, I understood why. I turned my head as Zach smirked at me, "Hey there, Gallagher Girl. No need to worry now; I'm going to be _all_ year."

_Great._

**Sorry if there are some spelling or grammar errors. I read through it a couple of times, but I always miss a couple (especially in my research papers for English, yeesh!).**


	10. Chapter 10

**Haha, I played the song below while I was finishing this chapter and now I can't get it out of my head. Stupid, catchy song.**

**Disclaimer: I solemnly swear that I am not Ally Carter. I'm just a big fan.  
**

* * *

Chapter 10. _You Don't Know Me feat. Regina Spektor _(by Ben Folds)

The next morning at breakfast we received another shock. As Buckingham handed our table our schedules, Macey nearly choked on her pancake. After spluttering and gulping down half a glass of water she managed to show us why.

Her schedule said she was signed up for CoveOps. Bex, Liz, and I were speechless, but Tina was all abuzz with excitement. "Oh my gosh, you are going to love it! At least, I think you will. Last semester sucked because of Townsend, but Mr. Solomon was great and I really think that Ms. Henderson is, like, the female version of him." Then she lowered her voice a bit as if filling Macey in a little secret. "Though maybe not quite as hot."

Macey gave a little smile. "Then again, who is as hot as Mr. Solomon?" Tina and Eva nodded in complete agreement.

Then Zach spoke up from behind me, "Is that really what all of you talk about while you eat?" We all turned to him and looked at him as if he was crazy. Did he not know girls at all? "I don't know how you manage to keep an appetite."

Bex quirked an eyebrow at him like she knew exactly what he did behind closed doors. "And what, dear Zach, do you talk about over waffles and orange juice?" At this, she took a sip of said orange juice without breaking eye contact which proved to be a pretty intimidating look for her.

"Definitely not which teacher would look better in a swimsuit." He gave me a little smirk as he sat down next to Mick. "Now the students…"

Bex and I exchanged a glance like we were thinking what he said through. Then we nodded at each other and said, "Grant."

Macey snickered as she reread her schedule (it was almost as if she thought that it might change or disappear if she set it down). Liz looked like she might want to debate whether or not that was actually true, and Zach looked like he had just been slapped in the face.

_Ah, sweet success._

We parted ways with Macey after breakfast. She had C&A first and we had COW. We wouldn't see her again until lunch which was right before our CoveOps class.

The morning hours seemed to fly by as we all inspected Mr. Smith's new face (not as hot as last year but still better than he had looked in eighth grade) and tried to avoid the smell that lurked around Dr. Fibs (his latest experiment had sort of blown up on him). Madame Dabney gave us a pop quiz on how to slip tranquilizers into someone's tea (which led to everyone stumbling out of the classroom half asleep for lunch).

I don't know what Macey expected as she came up to the senior table. Clapping? Hooraying? Unfortunately, none of us were able to give that to her as the tranquilizers hadn't completely worn off yet. It was hard enough to get my fork to my mouth. Zach was sitting next to me with his face dangerously close to his soup bowl, and Bex was on my other side, simply staring at her food in a daze.

"So…" Macey said causing Anna to wince and whisper, "Too loud." Macey rolled her eyes but continued in a quieter tone, "I have just arrived from my first CoveOps class, you know."

I was excited about that. Really, I was. I was just too tired to show it at the moment. "That's great, Macey. How'd it go?"

Macey smiled and gave a blissful sigh. "It was everything I always thought it would be. Amazing."

Courtney leaned forward a bit to see around Tina's head. "So Ms. Henderson is a good teacher? She actually teaches, right?" Courtney was obviously thinking about Townsend and the fact that last semester was practically a complete waste of time.

Macey nodded. "We talked about brush passes and cutoffs."

All of the seniors exchanged glances. We all knew that no one was as good a CoveOps teacher as Mr. Solomon, but maybe Tillie wouldn't be too bad.

And then Macey exclaimed, "Oh, I almost forgot!" She reached into her bag and drew out a small folded piece of paper. I could tell it was the real kind because of the way the crease in it was a little frayed and the paper had lost some of it whiteness in the aging process. She handed it to me. "Here, Cam. Ms. Henderson wanted me to give this to you. I don't know what says. She made me promise not to read it."

Suddenly, I didn't feel tired anymore. I snuck a look at Zach and saw that he was more alert now too. Slowly, I unfolded the paper and read the typed writing on it:

.

**M-**

** My words are jumbled and my thoughts are curdled. I make no sense even to myself. But I do know one thing yet. I'm not going to make it. I'm sorry.**

** -M**

**.  
**

My eyebrows furrowed. What was Tillie talking about? And why did she write a letter to herself and then give it me? Zach was staring at me with his eyebrows raised like he was waiting for me to explain myself, but I just shrugged. I had no idea what the note was supposed to mean, _if_ it was meant to mean anything. I'd ask Tillie about it when I saw her next hour.

Lunch dragged by (which I wasn't too upset about since Zach was right next to me). When it finally ended, our tranquilizers had completely worn off (except for on Kim Lee as Eva had accidentally slipped her an extra dosage—multiple times). All of the CoveOps seniors headed towards the classroom we had had CoveOps in last semester because even though Bex, Liz, Macey, and I had gotten into the sublevels, that didn't mean they were safe now.

We all sat down in the seats we had taken up residence in months ago, and Zach just so happened to choose the empty one behind me. Tillie wasn't in the room yet, so I can't say I was surprised when Zach leaned forward and whispered in my ear, "What was on the note, Gallagher Girl?"

I fought the urge to turn my head and look him in those deep, dark, mysterious eyes of his (that he just so happened to share with his mother, drat). Instead I said, "You really didn't read it over my shoulder? With all the hovering and obsessing you do, I would've expected that of you."

I could feel him shrugging. "I thought I'd give you the chance to tell me yourself. But if you aren't willing…" He let the sentence fade away. I'm guessing because Tillie had just entered and was staring right him. She smiled at him when he leaned back. I squirmed a little because while I thought it was pretty funny how Tillie could so easily make Zach do her bidding (which isn't an easy thing, let me tell you), I also sort of missed his nearness.

Everyone was quiet in the room as Tillie leaned back on the front edge of her desk. She let her gaze sweep across us, taking everyone in. "Infiltration," she said. "Who can tell me what it is?"

Bex shot her hand in the air. "When an operative penetrates the subject's walls by incorporating themselves into their life."

Tillie nodded. "And how would you go about doing that? 'Incorporating' yourself into the subject's life."

Bex's reply was straight from the textbook. "Get hired where the subject works; Get acquainted with a relative or friend; Pretend to—"

Tillie cut her off. "Yes, I know you know all the ways. I'm asking how you would infiltrate the subject's walls."

"I just—" She was cut off again.

"No, Miss Baxter, you didn't. You told me the choices. Now I want you to choose one." Tillie stepped away from her desk towards Bex. "How would _you_ do it?"

Bex didn't reply right away. When she answered it sounded almost like a question. "With subtlety?" A couple of people chuckled because we all knew Bex wasn't a subtle person.

"How so?" Tillie asked her.

"Well, uh, with a clear understanding of who I was and who I was putting myself in cahoots with."

Tillie gave a little smile. "And that's the catch, isn't it?"

"Pardon, Ms. Henderson?" Tina asked.

Tillie returned her attention to the rest of class and I swear I saw Bex sigh in relief. "Can we ever truly know who we are dealing with? Hell, I hardly even know who I am." Bex and I exchanged a glance, and I heard Zach shift in his seat behind me. "I guess the point I want to make for today is to pay attention to the people around you. I know you've probably been told that a million times. But in my line of work, I've noticed that the people we think we know best—" Her eyes landed on me. "—Are the people we don't know at all."

Tillie continued talking after that. She went on and on about perfecting your covers to the point that you know the most mundane things like what brand of vitamins they eat (yeah, I don't know how we got there either). But for me, the real lesson was over. She was right; I didn't know her at all.

But I would.

* * *

**Oh, dear. What's going to happen? What the heck is that note about? Trust me, I'm just as curious as you are. :)**

**I guess you'll just have to keep reading to find out. And I don't want to sound like a needy, old, begging lady but...review?  
**


	11. Chapter 11

**I want to say a quick thanks to everyone who has reviewed the story so far. I really appreciate anything and everything you have to say. I am trying to take what you're telling me and melding it with my idea of where the story is going. I hope you like the outcome. :)**

**Disclaimer: When I dream, I own the Gallagher Girls series. But then I wake up and realize that it all belongs to the genius Ally Carter.  
**

* * *

Chapter 11. _Wake the Sun _(by The Matches)

**Covert Operations Report**

**When Operatives Morgan, McHenry, Baxter, and Sutton (hereafter referred to as The Operatives) starting their research on Agent Matilda Henderson, they knew it was going to be difficult. However, they did not expect it to be impossible.**

"She's a ghost." Liz said. She was surrounded by half a dozen laptops all blinking the same response. There was no record of Matilda Henderson at Langley. "She must be."

"No. She has to be in there somewhere." Bex argued from her bed where she was working on our CoveOps homework. If there was one true thing about Tillie, it was that she wanted us prepared. She was giving us more homework than any of our other teachers. "I mean you don't outsmart a nuclear physicist who is dealing under the table and just not exist."

"Maybe that's why she has no files."Macey spoke up from behind her Organic Chemistry textbook. I hadn't known she was actually paying attention to anything around her. "Or maybe you just haven't gone deep enough yet."

"What do you mean?" Liz asked. "We've hacked all the way into Level 8 Clearance at Langley. I'd be surprised if even Cammie's mom had clearance any higher."

This was how it had been for the last three weeks. Every time we came up blank, we ended up getting into this argument. And then we always decided to go further because surely Tillie's file was on the next level.

In any case, it was wearing on us all. Especially Liz because while she could easily get into Langley, the more levels we hacked into, the harder it was to stay in. She had to almost constantly be writing code to keep the computers from crashing on us.

"No! No, no, no, _no._" She said when Bex pushed her to keep going yet again. To prove her point she crossed her arms but almost immediately brought her fingers back down to the keyboard as the computers started to beep.

"Oh, come on, Lizzy!" Bex pushed her CoveOps papers away from her and they went flying in the air. "We need to know."

Liz hunched her shoulders. "I know, I know." I heard a blurp from one of the computers. Liz had exited out of Langley, putting us back at square one. "I'm saying we also need a new plan."

-.-.-.-

That night, I couldn't fall asleep. I felt like there was something obvious about Tillie that I was missing and it annoyed me to no end that I couldn't figure it out. Eventually, I completely gave up on getting any blessed Zzz's. After double and triple checking that Bex, Liz, and Macey were sound asleep, I snuck out of our room.

I wandered the halls for a while. I didn't think about all the secret passageways I passed that I couldn't access anymore. I didn't think about the fact that Mr. Solomon still hadn't woken up. I wasn't even thinking about Zach (for once). Instead, I was thinking about the time Bex and I spent at the White Room Base and how Tillie had acted right before she left on her trip.

It wasn't until I had run into him that I noticed Zach. "Oh, sorry." I said, taking a couple steps back.

"It's fine," Zach said. He was in plaid pajama pants and a tight black t-shirt. When he grinned at me, I almost swooned. Then he said, "I didn't need all ten toes anyway." And that's why my swoon was an almost.

"So…" I stifled a yawn. "What brings you out here yonder?"

Note to self: _Always_ get a good night's sleep before talking to Zachary Goode.

Zach tilted his head to the side and a blush rose to my cheeks. Crap. "A good spy always checks his perimeters at random times." That's true. And I might have believed any other person. But it was Zach which meant there was always more to the story. But I decided to let it slide this one time.

"And apparently in random clothing." I was lying. I actually thought his clothing was sex—pretty. I thought it was _pretty_.

"This?" Zach gestured at his chest (probably to show off his biceps and pecs but no way was that working on me. I was above—crap, I looked). "None of this is by chance, Gallagher Girl."

My eyes narrowed. And then my mind went back to the last time Zach and I had been alone together.

**At exactly 0102 The Operative remembered that Zach knew things about The Subject. Big things.**

"Zach," I said, inching closer. "Do you still find Tillie less than trustworthy?"

Now it was Zach's turn to narrow his eyes. "Why do you ask?"

I shrugged. "I guess because you never really explained the exact details of why I shouldn't trust her."

Zach stuffed his hands in the front pockets of his pajamas. "What do you want, Cammie?"

"What do you know, Zach?" At this point, I was all 'up in his grill' but he didn't seem all that fazed. At least, not the way I wanted to be. When I caught him trying to sneak a peek down my shirt, I stepped back.

Zach smiled at me, unashamed. "That depends."

"On what?"

Now it was Zach stepping forward. "How good you are at negotiating."

His face was close to mine now. Just a few inches closer and our lips would touch…No! I had keep my mind on the task at hand. "Negotiating."

"Yep. You don't actually think I'd give my intel up without a fight, do you?" In all honesty, I had hoped he would. But I knew he wouldn't.

I sighed. "Fine. What do you want?"

"Really?" He said. He almost sounded disappointed, as if he had wanted me to argue with him. "You're going to give in just like that."

I crossed my arms in the small space between the two of us. My arms grazed his abs as I did so and I couldn't help but notice that they felt _really_ nice. Stupid, fit, spy boy. "I figure I might as well let you put forth a suggestion first."

He shrugged. "I want a date."

"A date?" That was easy. I knew for a fact that Chef Louis always kept a bowl of them in the back of his pantry. And then, "Oh, a _date_."

"It's only fair." When I looked confused, he said. "Because our first and last date got cut short. You ran off with that MiMi girl—"

"DeeDee." I corrected.

"Whatever. The point is you abandoned me with Jimmy. And then we had our surprise CoveOps final." He smirked at me. "You owe it to me, Gallagher Girl."

I didn't respond for a minute. "First, it's _Josh_. And second, I…I don't know if I can."

Zach nodded like he had been expecting me to say that. Then he raised his hand to my face and brushed some loose hair behind my ear. I closed my eyes went I felt his hand start to pull away. When I opened them again, Zach had begun to walk backwards down the hall. "Think about it, Gallagher Girl."

When he turned the corner, I stayed. I stayed there for what felt like hours even though I knew it was only a few minutes. Then I headed back to my room as it seemed sleep was finally coming to me.

I snuck back into my room and saw my three best friends still sound asleep. I settled on my back in bed and stared up at the ceiling. My vision started to blur as my eyes got more and more sleepy until I finally closed them, shutting myself off to complete darkness.

Right before sleep overtook me, I had one last conscious thought. _Screw it._

**The Operative made a rash decision on very little sleep to do whatever it took to complete the mission. With or without her friends' permission.**

-.-.-.-

The next day in CoveOps, Tillie gave us her version of a pop quiz on decoys. By that I mean she took us outside and ignited one of Dr. Fibs' Enhanced Stink Bombs (which put skunks and port-a-potties to shame). The smoke from it fogged my vision so badly I could only see a foot in front of me. I could hear the people around me gasping as well as someone gagging. So you can understand my confusion when Tillie's clear voice rang out, "What are you going to do?" How was she not affected by the smell? She had dropped it practically at her feet.

Tillie asked the question again and this time I heard Eva answer between her splutters, "Get to…clean…ground."

"But that's exactly what they want." Tillie said. "In the time that it takes you to get to untainted air, the subject will have escaped from your grasp. When you finally get your line of sight back, they'll have disappeared."

Everyone was quiet for a moment as they thought the question through again (or as quiet as you can be when it smells like you've been dropped in a vat of sour milk. Then, I heard Zach's voice from behind me say, "You wait."

"Wait for what?" Tillie said in the way I had come to know meant the answer was close. "If you wait for the smoke to clear it could take hours, and you'll be just as screwed than if you had gotten to clean air. Possibly even more so."

"You wait for a sound." I said before Zach could. "That way you know which way to start heading toward."

"Exactly," Tillie said, and I could hear the smile in her voice even though I couldn't see it. "If you've gotten caught in this decoy you'll lose the subject no matter what. But if you know where they're headed, it can make things a little easier."

"So now we wait?" Tina asked a few feet from my left.

"You do. Have fun." Tillie said. "I have to go visit an old friend."

"Who?" Bex asked from in front of me.

"Joseph Solomon. Right before class began I was informed that he had woken up. Now, if you'll excuse me, class is dismissed early today."

And then Tillie left us in the smoky haze, gasping (and not just because the stink bomb had started its second wave). When the fog finally started to dwindle a quarter of an hour later, we all stayed still. Mr. Solomon was awake?

I knew Zach was still behind me because I could hear him shifting. He wanted to go see Mr. Solomon just as much as me. Maybe even more. After another moment, I turned to see him do just that as he turned tail and jogged back to the main building. I stayed where I was with the other girls. We spent the rest of the hour sitting alongside the barn in silence, none of us knowing what to say.

Finally, Mr. Solomon would be coming back. For the first time, I realized that I hadn't been convinced he would make it through. Now that I knew he would, I couldn't help but feel that a weight had been lifted off of me. The feeling took away my words.

When P&E came, Bex and I filled Liz and Macey in on what Tillie had said. They both got really excited and we spent the next five minutes hugging (until Coach came by and then we had start practicing our Spudelvy Kicks). We resolved to go visit Mr. Solomon after dinner. It was at the point that we decided on that that I noticed Zach wasn't in class. I was worried for a second until I realized he was probably still with Mr. Solomon. _Talking about the journal maybe,_ I thought.

Bex, Liz, Macey, and I rushed through our homework once class was done so that when dinner rolled around and Mom officially announced that Mr. Solomon was awake, we were able to leave right away with apples in hand without any worrying necessary.

The nurse in the infirmary let us in, and we rushed to the door of Mr. Solomon's room. I had to admit that I was a little surprised when I saw that Zach was still there (what had it been, four hours?). When he saw the four of us, he quickly said goodbye to our teacher and exited the room. As my best friends rushed to Mr. Solomon's side, I hesitated.

Then, without trying to think about it, I rushed after Zach. I caught up with him right before he went back out into the hall. "Zach!"

He turned at the sound of my voice and gave me a little smile. "Need a kiss goodnight, Gallagher Girl?"

I scowled at him. "Hardly. I just wanted to tell you yes."

He tilted his head to the side. "Yes to what?"

"You know what." He shrugged like he really didn't and I put my hands on my hips. "Yes," I whispered. "I'll go on a date with you."

A smile crept slowly onto his face. "I knew you couldn't resist me." Then he leaned down and gave me a kiss on the lips that, despite its brevity, left me breathless.

He was still smiling as he stepped to the door out of the infirmary. "I'll tell you the time and place later. Now, I think there's someone waiting for you." He gestured back to Mr. Solomon's room.

I nodded a little and turned back the way I'd come. I didn't look back to see if Zach was watching me. Instead, I kept walking forward to the room where my father's old best friend was with my best friends, finally awake.

* * *

**Comments?**


	12. Chapter 12

**Sorry for the delay in updating. I had a bit of writer's block on this story. That and I got a little carried away with reading rather than writing. It's okay. I'm in rehab now (although, if you know any good FanFics or books feel free to recommend them to me).**

**Also, I'm thinking about getting a Beta Reader. I need someone to keep me on a schedule and to proofread for my slip-ups. Any ideas who might be willing to put up with me.  
**

* * *

Chapter 12. _No Easy Way Out _(by Survivor)

I tried hard not to let my mind dwell on the fact that Zach kissed me. I really did. I mean, I had so much going on right now with Mr. Solomon waking up and Tillie teaching here and not being sure if I could trust her. Oh, and the fact that while I might be safe here in Gallagher, there were people outside those walls trying to _kidnap_ me.

But I found the kiss repeatedly sneaking into my thoughts for the next three days. I thought about it over breakfast when he sat down across from me. When he took his regular seat behind me in CoveOps and when Madame Dabney sent us both to get tea and cookies from Chef Louis. When he walked beside me in the hall, his hand brushing against mine.

It was driving me insane.

Finally, the weekend came and I was able to relax. That is, until my roommates told me their new plan.

"I cannot believe you want me to do this again." I said after they explained it to me Sunday morning.

"But Cammie, your mom must know something about Tillie," Liz argued. "And we're running out of options."

"What about Fiona?" I asked, grasping at straws. Fiona was still at Gallagher Academy, working on security detail or something but was rarely seen. It made sense as we had learned her codename was Shadow.

Bex gave me a look. "You really think she's gonna give up classified information about her partner?"

"You think my mom will?"

"She won't be as suspicious as Fiona would be." Bex insisted. "It's normal to ask your parents about family friends you've lost touch with." I wanted to argue more, but I could see that Bex wouldn't give in. Sighing, I let her win and was rewarded with her beaming smile.

That night, I tried not to think about the fact that I was bugged with cameras and speakers and who knows what else Liz had concocted and made Macey sew into the lining of my clothes.

My mother gave me a hug when I first entered the office, and I felt a twinge of guilt at what I was doing. "Hey, sweetie."

"Hey," I said, extracting myself inconspicuously from her arms and plopping onto the couch. "So what's on the menu for tonight?"

Mom started to explain to me the complexity it takes to heat up corn dogs in a microwave and how it totally wasn't her fault that they sort of blew up when there was a knock at the door. She sent me an apologetic look as she went to answer it but what can you do when your mom is the headmistress.

Seriously, what can you do? Anything to get me out of doing this would suffice.

I watched my mom as she opened the door (making sure that she was constantly in range of the little video camera hidden in one of the buttons of my shirt. I couldn't see the person on the other side of the door but I could see that my mom was surprised to see whoever it was. "Is there something you need?" She asked cordially. Her body language however, was not quite as nice.

"I heard it was Morgan dinner night." The person said, and oh damn, did I recognize that voice. It took all of my training to remain just as I appeared. My shoulders stayed a little slumped rather than raised to my ears in my spaz attack. My legs stayed stationary rather than running me toward the window (which I'm sure would be a much more pleasant death than one by a trained operative who is very close to catching you while you are trying to SPY ON THEM!). "I thought I might care to join you." Tillie said.

Mom was obviously torn between shutting the door in Tillie's face and just letting her in. At the moment, I was perfectly fine with the door shutting option, but apparently Mom wasn't because with a sigh she swung the door open some more and let Tillie enter. My old babysitter and new CoveOps teacher smiled at me when she saw me on the couch. She skipped (yes, skipped) over to the couch and landed herself next to me with a bounce.

"Hey, Camster." She said, slipping an arm around my shoulders. "How's the month been so far? I hope I'm not boring you and your classmates too much."

I shook my head because, truth be told, Tillie wasn't that bad of a teacher. Sure she gave us a lot of homework—and, I do mean A LOT of homework—but any time one of us started to complain about it, we thought of last semester and how it's sometimes better to have too much rather than too little.

Tillie gave me one of her award-winning smiles, turning her average looks into something dazzling. Then she turned to my mom and asked, "So what's on the menu for tonight, Rachel? Not eggs, I hope." I decided against asking why not.

An uncharacteristic blush graced Mom's face. "No, we're having pizza." When Tillie looked a little worried (she was well aware of my mother's lack of cooking skills), she added, "From the pizza place in Roseville."

Tillie visibly relaxed and the so did the atmosphere. A bit. It wasn't until a security guard arrived carrying our dinner though that anyone said anything again.

"Have you been to see Joe since he woke up?" Mom asked Tillie as we grabbed slices of yummy (but very greasy) cheese pizza.

Tillie nodded. "Right after he woke up. I had to ask him a few questions." She glanced at me quickly. "I wanted his advice on the CoveOps class." Yeah, sure. I really wanted to point out that for a spy, Tillie was a sucky liar.

"About that," Mom said, her eyes looking warmer in that second than I had ever seen them when Tillie was concerned. "The board—and I, as well—are very grateful for you dropping everything to come teach here."

Tillie shrugged it off like it was nothing. But I knew (from the fact that her eyes were completely focused on her pizza) that my mom's acceptance of her right then must have meant a lot for her. "You do whatever you have to for the people you care about." Tillie looked back up at my mom. "Absolutely anything."

This seemed to irritate Mom. She sighed and fell back in her chair. "Not this again, Matilda."

"Why not?" Tillie asked, her voice fervent. "It makes sense, now even more so than it did when he disappeared." I had no clue what she was talking about.

Mom set her plate down and stood up. "That is enough, Matilda. It was bad enough when you first brought it up all those years ago. I won't have you saying it now and giving Cammie false hope."

"False hope?" I asked. I looked between the two of them. "What are you talking about?"

"It isn't false!" Tillie exclaimed in a voice that was easily an octave higher than her already high voice. She continued in a different, more pleading tone. "He sent me a note two days before he disappeared, Rachel. I didn't know what it meant when he sent it to me, but after I found out what happened, I put the pieces together. Now that the Circle is coming after Cammie, it all makes sense to me."

"Stop!" My mother yelled but Tillie ignored.

"He's not dead, he's just underground." Tillie's eyes were wide and sincere, and I finally understood what they were talking about. My dad.

"I know how much my husband meant to you." Mom's voice was shaking. "I do, really. But you have no right to come here and say those things."

"What things don't I have the right to say, Rachel? Because as far as I can see, you have no reason to be upset with what I'm saying. Is there something that I'm missing here that only an almighty Gallagher Girl like yourself can see?" Tillie's tone almost seemed mocking when she said _Gallagher Girl_.

"Your schooling has _nothing _to do with this!" Mom threw her hands into the air, and I shrunk a little into the couch. Sure, I had seen the two of them pick on each other before, but never had I seen them outright fight with each other.

"Oh, please. If I had been an alumni here, you would be all over my theory." Tillie crossed her arms, and for the first time, I noticed that she was close to tears. "Just because I went to that school doesn't mean I'm just like all the others that came out of it. Just like Cassandra doesn't represent all of the other students who come out of Gallagher."

"I know that."

"Then why won't you even consider the possibility that I'm right? That he's still out there?"

My mom's shoulders slumped and I saw a flash of the woman I'd seen on my dad's birthday almost two years ago. "Because sometimes it's better to not hope rather than to feel heartbroken every time you hit a dead end, Matilda."

"But this isn't a dead end," Tillie insisted. "He's leaving clues, hints for us to find him; for _her_—" she pointed to me "to find him. Matthew is one of the best agents I know. If he doesn't want to be found by his enemies, he won't be. But maybe his daughter can find him and that's why the Circle wants her."

My mother sighed and sat back down on her chair. "Leave the hypothesizing to the people who are actually tasked with that job, Henderson. Your job right now is to keep the Circle from getting Cammie." Mom nodded in my direction, letting me know that at least she hadn't forgotten I was in the room.

Tillie's demeanor changed then. The pleading and desperate look in her eyes hardened into something close to determination. Her shoulders stiffened and without saying another word, she headed for the door. She had just opened when she turned back to my mom. "You might want to get your facts straight, Rachel. I wasn't hired just to protect Cammie. I'm also here to find out why the hell there's any need to protect her in the first place."

With that she left. What's even worse is that she didn't slam the door on her way out. Instead, she shut it calmly, like nothing had just happened. Mom didn't say anything for a couple of minutes, and I eventually said goodnight. I had to get out of there.

When I got back to my room I could tell that Bex, Macey, and Liz had obviously been watching and listening to the feeds connected to me because they were silent, too. It wasn't until we were getting in bed that anyone said anything. "So I think we got quite a bit of information tonight." Macey said.

"You think?" Bex's muffled voice came from where her face was smashed into her pillow. We laughed a little, but it was more anxious than heartfelt.

When it stopped, Macey spoke again. "At least we know why she's here now."

I stared up at the ceiling and thought out loud, "Now we just need to find out where she came from."

That night, for the first time since I agreed to the date with Zach three days ago, I didn't dream about him. Instead, I dreamed of a nameless school and a young, vibrant girl there, standing in the midst of all the chaos around her, smiling. And then my dad was there, shielding the little girl from the people racing toward her.

I awoke with a gasp and shot up in bed. Tillie had said that Dad sent her a note. Could it be the one she'd had Macey give me on the first day of classes?

* * *

**Dun-dun-dun. Crap, did I just do another cliff-hanger. I have to stop doing those...**

**I'll try to get the Zammie date in the next chapter. However, I'm having trouble picturing the kind of date Zach would take Cammie on. Any ideas?**

**PLEASE REVIEW. Even just leaving me a tiny one would put you in my top-ten favorite peoples list (I might even put you above my soul mate Taylor Lautner for a day or two).  
**


	13. Chapter 13

**Ah! Another long wait for the next chapter. Unfortunately, now that school is getting close to starting, my updates might come at about this rate. Anyways, I hope you like this chapter (although, it might be a little unrealistic. But if you think about, this entire story is unrealistic soooo in comparison this chapter might actually be realistic. And now I'm just rambling...)**

**Enjoy!  
**

* * *

Chapter 13. _Break Me Out_

It had taken me awhile to fall back to sleep after my dream. Consequently, I woke up late and had to rush to get ready in time for breakfast. It also meant that a few things had slipped my mind.

When I started down the stairs and saw Zach at the end of them, I brushed it aside. It wasn't until he started pulling me away from the Great Hall that I really noticed him. "Hey," I said, trying to extricate my wrist from his fingers to no avail. "I want food."

"This'll only take a second." Zach said. He pulled me past a couple of seventh graders who looked at us weirdly. My empty stomach made me a wee bit irritable so I made a weird face right back at them and gave a little 'hoorah' in my head when they scampered off. I knew I'd feel bad about it later, but at the moment, my stomach was my main concern.

Which meant listening to whatever it was that Zach had to say was not on my to-do list. "What do you want, Zachary?" I asked once he had led me into an empty closet. I recognized it as one that used to have a secret passageway that led to the barns. Alas, that lovely tunnel was gone now, so I couldn't make a run for some waffles.

I clucked my tongue when Zach stayed silent. I looked down at my wrist towards my imaginary watch and gave him a pointed glare. Zach smiled at me and said, "I thought you might like to know when our date is."

I stopped mid-cluck and looked at him a little stunned. Crap. After what had happened last night, I had totally forgotten about the date. I didn't say anything and he continued. "So, it's Friday at seven." He started to walk away and then looked at me over his shoulder. "And you might want to bring a change of clothes. Just in case."

He left, and I stayed where I was for a couple of seconds until my stomach growled. Then, I rushed to the Grand Hall where I ate my breakfast at an unhealthy speed. I shot a couple glances at Zach who was sitting diagonal to me, but he was never looking my way. I scowled a bit. Stupid boy making me act like my hormones controlled me.

Which they don't. Or at least, they never used to.

That day, I gave up on my whole avoiding-Zach-at-all-costs plan because I didn't see the point anymore. I mean, we were going on a date on Friday. I even partnered up with him in CoveOps for an exercise we were doing on interrogations.

"Chances are that you will either be an interrogator or be interrogated yourself at some point in your career," Tillie said as she walked down the aisles. She showed no signs of having gotten into a fight with the headmistress the day before. "It's a risk we all take, a very large one. Therefore, it will be a major part of your CoveOps curriculum this semester."

Zach gave a little smirk when I turned in my seat. "You aren't going to be able to interrogate anything out of me, Gallagher Girl."

I narrowed my eyes at him and suppressed a small smile. "Don't underestimate me, Zach. Besides, who says I even want to know anything about you?"

"Please," Zach said, leaning toward me. "All the ladies want to know me. And I know you want to know more about me because as I recall, we are going on a date on Friday."

He quirked an eyebrow at me, and I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him.

-.-.-.-

The rest of the week seemed to fly by, and then it was Friday. I had filled Macey, Bex, and Liz in on the date on Thursday night in hopes that it would cut back on their time to rant and fuss about it. I apparently didn't think through the part where they would fill an entire week's worth of jumping, giggling, and 'why in the world?'s into twenty-four hours.

"It's sort of romantic, don't you think?" Liz said from a couple feet behind me. I could see her in the mirror's reflection, clutching her pillow and sprawled across her bed.

I snorted. "Yeah, practically blackmailing me into going out with him. Dreamy." Macey tugged at a knot in my hair with her fingers as she French-braided my hair. In a lower voice I said, "I real knight in shining armor."

From the unnecessarily hard pull on my hair, I assumed Macey didn't appreciate my sarcasm. My assumption was proven when she said, "At least he wants a date in the first place. I mean, after all the trouble you've put the poor boy through in the past year, I'm surprised he can still bear the sight of you."

Bex chuckled a bit, and then ordered me to shut my eyes. I obliged grudgingly because I knew that if I didn't she might poke me in the eye with her eyeliner pencil. "Well, in any case, I don't see why you have to primp me so much. It's not like he's taking me Roseville High's prom or something."

Bex and Macey paused their movements around me. I chanced opening my eyes for a peek and saw them looking at each other over my head. "You don't think he's going to take her to a dance do you?" Bex asked, her accent more pronounced with her sudden, inexplicable worry.

Macey frowned. "He better not be. He should have given us fair warning if he was planning to. I mean, dances change everything."

I rolled my eyes, which caught Bex's attention and she ordered me to snap 'em closed or she'd sew 'em closed. I knew she was joking. Mostly.

It took Macey and Bex another hour to coerce me into wearing the outfit they'd picked out for me. It wasn't that bad of an outfit, but I did have some reservations about donning shorts in the middle of October. When I was finally about to leave the room, Liz gave an exclamation of surprise and jumped off her bed. "Just a minute!" She called as her head disappeared under her bed. When her face reappeared she was beaming.

"I totally forgot about this until just now," She said as took my wrist and clipped a bracelet to it.

I fingered it with my other hand as I narrowed my eyes at Liz. "Why do I get the feeling that this isn't just an accessory?"

"I have no idea what you mean," Liz shrugged. "It _is _an accessory." She caught the looks that Bex, Macey, and I were sending her and gave little _humph_. "Well, it's a spy accessory. It can record up to twelve hours of audio."

"Then why didn't you have me use this last Sunday?" I asked, looking at the bracelet for microphones.

Liz gave a little face. "Because it's sort of a prototype. And because I didn't deem it necessary that you take a weapon to dinner with your mother."

"Weapon?" Macey and I exclaimed. Bex looked a little excited.

"Yeah, just the run-of-the-mill, uh…" Liz's voice lowered like someone besides us would hear her. "Blow-dart."

My eyes widened, and I took a step back. "And why do I need a blow-dart exactly? I thought this was a date not a murder spree."

"Oh, so you finally admit it's a date and not just a means to an end." Bex smirked at me. I acted very mature and made a face at her.

Liz gave a nervous laugh. "Cammie, do you really think I would give you a murder weapon? No! The darts just have a slight coating of tranquilizer in them. You know, in case Zach takes you anywhere dangerous."

"Oh, sure. Because obviously Zach is going to take me off grounds for our date when his own _mother_ is after me." I shook my head. "Not likely."

"Well," Macey said. "Better safe than sorry. Besides, this way if the boy really pisses you off you have an easy way of shutting him up."

Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in front of Zach with my arms crossed. "You have to be kidding me."

"I am completely serious." He said, mimicking my posture.

"Do you realize how much trouble we could get in? How dangerous it is?" I exclaimed. "My mother would never forgive me if we got caught."

"Well then I guess we better not get caught." Zach smiled. When I didn't return it he sighed. "Oh come on, Gallagher Girl. It's one night. And it isn't like we're not going to come back or keep the security down. I'll have you back at a very specific time."

"Oh, well then that makes it all better." Not. Seriously, what was he thinking? "Zach, only an insane person would go to Roseville right now."

Zach grabbed my hand and tugged me closer to him and said, "Then be crazy for a night."

-.-.-.-

"My mother is going to kill me," I said to the night air. Zach gave me a lazy smile and headed down the road. "Remind me again how you managed to get security down."

"It was just a momentary thing." He called over his shoulder. "Don't worry. I only programmed it to happen tonight." I caught up to him and looked at his profile in the dimming light.

"Where to? We are working on a clock here." I said. Before I agreed to come I had made him tell me what time we had to be back. He managed to get the security to go down at exactly 7: 54 and 9:54. But apparently, the security was as far as Zach had thought everything through. In the end, we decided to go into the first diner we saw.

"I wonder if they have corn dogs…" I said aloud when we got our menus. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable. Zach had snagged the seat that looked out of the window which meant my back was to it. It made me feel vulnerable. "How's it looking out there?" I murmured.

"So far, all good." Zach's eyes didn't leave his menu, but somehow I knew he was still keeping an eye on the lookout for anyone we might recognize. "No sign of either of our moms or Jimmy."

I rolled my eyes at his deliberate mistake of Josh's name. The waitress came and took our order, and then the two of us just sat there. Zach leaned back in his chair, and I traced my fingers on the table, making invisible pictures. Finally, I sighed and said, "We might as well get it out of the way."

"Get what of the way?" Zach asked innocently.

"What you know about Tillie," I said. I leaned in toward him. "Spill."

Zach shook his head. "You're doing this all wrong. We agreed to a date. If we talk about Tillie during the date then it becomes startlingly similar to an interrogation."

I pursed my lips. "Well, she is the reason why I agreed to this."

"Sing that tune all you want, Cammie," Zach said, leaning toward me the way I was to him. "But we both know you said yes because you _wanted_ to say yes."

"What I want are answers." I answered truthfully. Or mostly truthfully because it was beginning to get hard for me to deny the part of me that did want Zach. He smirked at me as our food arrived like he didn't believe me. God, I hope he wasn't wearing one of those rings that could tell him I was lying. I checked his fingers. All good.

Dinner passed relatively smoothly. There were a couple moments when I got close to slapping him upside the head and other times when I wanted to kiss the smirk off his face, but in the end I did neither. When the bill came, he paid and we went on our merry way. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say that we just went on our way. I was getting a little irritated that he still wouldn't tell me anything about Tillie.

"We've had dinner, now tell me what you know." I said, pushing on his chest to make him stop in front of the gazebo. It was a relatively quiet night, and there weren't a lot of people around.

"Now why would I do that and lose all of my leverage?" He smiled and stuck his hands in his pockets. Autumn was in full effect as a cold drift came and blew some yellow and orange leaves past our feet.

"Leverage?" I gave him a disbelieving look.

"Yes. What I know about Tillie is the only thing keeping you around, Gallagher Girl," He said. "I'm not about to give that up."

"We had a deal."

"And now I want to make a slight adjustment to that deal." He crept closer to me. Close enough that I could feel his body heat. Close enough for me to see that his eyes weren't focused on me but in the distance behind me. I wanted to know what was so intriguing, but his body was blocking my view of the windows behind him.

"What adjustment?" I huffed. My breath came out in a little cloud, and for the first time I realized just how cold I was. Stupid shorts my friends made me wear. I made a little face at my bare legs.

Zach's eyes finally met mine. "I want in on your little research project, of course." He noticed my hesitation. "Come on, Gallagher Girl. You could use me on this and you know it."

His eyes darted behind me again and I had to fight the urge to look behind me. I bit my lip as I thought what he said through. Was what he knew really worth letting him in on what Macey, Bex, Liz, and I were doing? Zach shifted slightly in impatience, and I took a leap of faith. "Fine. You're in."

He smiled at me and grabbed my hand. "Good. Now, we should probably be heading back to school."

"But it's only 9:03. The alarms won't go down for nearly another hour."

"Well, we don't really have an hour to kill here." He moved to my side and grabbed my hand. Finally, I could see the windows' reflections…and what was behind me. "Come on." Zach tugged me away from the gazebo and headed toward the pharmacy. Behind me, I could hear the footsteps of the person behind us. A person I'd seen before in the tunnels at Blackthorne.

"I knew it was a stupid idea to come to Roseville." I muttered and was rewarded with Zach's gentlemanly response, "Shut up."

* * *

**REVIEW! What do you think is going to happen now? :)**


	14. Chapter 14

**Heavens Almightly, I haven't updated in a while. Sorry about that, I've had things going on with my family, and the school year is starting up, and I babysit two out-of-control boys all day long. And then, on top of that, I got sick. I guess my time's been a little tight lately. But here is chapter 14! It's longer than the others but I'm not sure if that'll make it better. Leave your feedback! :)**

**And if you want me update faster, tell me! Otherwise, I sort of just let it go on the backburner... oops.**

* * *

Chapter 14. _Easier to Lie _(by Aqualung)

It was hard to keep my feet at an even pace beside Zach. My muscles ached to run, run, run far from the person following us. The pharmacy was only a few yards away, but the distance seemed to last for miles.

"He's from the Circle." I whispered. I wasn't sure if it was to Zach, myself, or nothing at all.

Zach replied anyways. "Yes."

"He's following us." He nodded.

"And if he catches up to us what will he do?"

We finally reached the steps of the pharmacy and put his hand on the small of my back, guiding me up them to the door. "We're not going to wait to find out."

I entered the store with him right behind me, and started to ask him what he had up his sleeve when a voice in the store said, "I'm sorry, we closed at ni-"

I reacted instinctively. "God, I think I'm going to be sick." I hunched over and wrapped my arms around my stomach.

Zach seemed to know what I was doing and rubbed my back with the hand still resting there. He asked the cashier if we could use the bathroom and she waved us on. She took a couple of steps back when we passed the counter like she didn't want whatever I supposedly had.

Zach opened the bathroom door and ushered me in. He looked the door behind us, and I straightened up. Through the thin wood of the door, I could make out the sound of the door chimes as someone entered. I heard the girl from behind the counter repeating what she had told us earlier about the store being closed.

I turned my attention away from the door. I quick look around the room showed no windows or stalls. There was nowhere to hide or escape. "Now what do we do?" I whispered.

I heard Zach sigh and I whipped my head around to see him leaning against the wall. He ran a hand through his hair before looking at me. "Shit, this is my fault." He said.

"Yeah, it is." I felt bad as the words came out, but I was a little frustrated. My attitude softened a bit when I saw the stricken look on Zach's face. I came up next to him. "But it's also sort of mine, too."

Zach shot me a sideways glance. "No, it isn't."

I slapped his shoulder. "Hey, I'm trying to make you feel better here." I smiled at him and he returned it. My smile faded a bit when I let my thoughts drift. "That guy out there. I remember him from Blackthorne." Zach nodded slightly.

"You know who he is, right? You know what he'll do if he catches us."

Zach hesitated. He looked straight at the door where we could hear no sound on the other side. "He wouldn't do anything with an audience," He finally said, resting his eyes on my face for a second before bringing them back to the door. "He likes subtlety."

He looked like he was going to say more but then there was a large bang in the other room. My hand went to my wrist where the bracelet Liz had given me rested. Zach and I both rushed to the door, and before either of us had thought anything through, we were opening it.

My mind prepared itself to see the man with a gun or something and the cashier on the floor. It didn't prepare itself to see the girl crouched on the counter with the man several feet away, clutching a bleeding leg. My eyes widened as the girl grabbed a spoon. Now, I'm sure that it was just a regular spoon used for innocent, albeit fattening, ice cream incidents, but this moment didn't have anything to do with ice cream and that girl suddenly looked far from innocent. So yeah, the spoon looked pretty dangerous.

The guy who had followed Zach and me into the pharmacy started backing away like he too was afraid of the spoon-wielder. He shot a glance at Zach and me which meant that he didn't see the spoon flying toward him and hitting its target right where the sun don't shine. He doubled over, and the girl jumped down from the counter. As he was facing the floor, she executed an excellent Hamp Style kick, causing him to fly onto his back and promptly lose consciousness.

The girl stood with her back toward us for a minute. When she started to move, my fingers sought the little button Liz had shown me on my bracelet. She turned around and looked at Zach and me. "Having a blast out on the town?" She grinned for a second. Her voice was drastically different from what I had heard minutes earlier. Now, it bore a strong Australian accent.

"Give a hand," She said turning back to the defeated Circle agent at her feet. "No reason I should clean up your mess all alone."

I advanced slowly toward her, ready to test just how strong the tranquilizer in my bracelet was. Zach, on the other hand, strode easily toward her. He grabbed an arm and leg and looked at the girl. "Where to?"

She grinned again and pointed behind the counter. At this, I snatched a roll of paper towels and hydrogen peroxide from the nearest shelf and went to mop up the blood on the floor that the man's wound had left. The girl crouched next to me while I worked, and I took the chance to really look at her.

She looked older close up than I had assumed she was. She was slightly shorter than the average woman, and her hair was a dark blonde color. "So I guess you aren't from Roseville?" I said.

She gave a little smirk. "That would be a good guess." She looked me in the eye, and I noticed how green her eyes were. Like grass right after a rain. "And I guess you got over your bout of nausea."

I shrugged and changed the subject. "What part of Australia are you from?"

She straightened her back. "What makes you think I'm from down under?" She replied in a perfect Southern accent. I frowned.

"So you just change accents for the hell of it?" I finished wiping and sterilizing the floor. I picked up the used paper towels and chucked them into a garbage bin next to the door.

"Hey, if you're free to do so, then do." She walked over to cash register where Zach was standing with his hands in his pockets. I may have given her a weird look behind her back but that doesn't matter. "Move it, Goode." He scooted farther down the counter, and I seated myself on the stool next to him.

The girl-or woman I guess was the more accurate term-punched a few numbers into the register and with a ping, the side of it slid out. She grabbed what resembled a walkie-talkie and walked off into a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

She came back a minute later and stood across the counter, device still in hand. "You're in luck, kids. Phillips is coming for you." This time she sounded Russian. She was really starting to sound like a show-off.

"And that's lucky for us why?" Zach asked.

"Because Henderson would bite your head off if she knew you snuck out of Gallagher." She said, still with a Russian accent. She looked at me. "So would your mom."

"If?" I said, not daring to believe that they hadn't been informed of my rule-breaking.

She smiled at me. "Phillips has always believed in letting people roam as they please. She doesn't think you should get in trouble for wanting to escape your cage for a night, Cameron. I agree. It tends to get us in trouble with our superiors but screw it."

Her use of my name reminded me that I still didn't know hers. "Who are you?" I asked her.

She looked over my shoulder before answering me as if she were afraid somebody unwanted would hear, and I had to remind myself that there was a Circle agent just a few feet away so her precaution might actually be called for. "Jonah Peters." She extended her hand to me.

I shook it and asked the question I already knew the answer to. "What brings you to Roseville, Virginia?"

"The same thing that's brought legends like Henderson and Phillips here." Jonah gave a laugh. I was starting to get used to the frequent accent change now; I barely noticed that she sounded Indian that time. "You."

There was a knock on the door, and Jonah went to open it. I shivered as the brisk aire washed over me and looked in the reflection of some spoons to see an upside down version of Fiona.

"Merry meet, Fiona," Jonah said, and I heard Zach try to pass his laughter off as a cough.

Fiona shrugged off the weird greeting and went right on to the accent. "What have I told you about doing that all the time, Jonnie?"

"Not to do it." Jonah's voice took on an Australian accent again. She sighed. "It just gets hard sometimes."

Fiona smiled which made me realize just how little I'd ever seen her smile. She was usually so serious. "You'll get over it eventually, I'm sure. I did." She turned to Zach and I, and her smile faded.

"Come on," She said, and I jumped off of my stool. I gave a little wave to Jonah as I passed her, but her attention had moved on to the agent in the back room. Fiona held the door open for Zach and I, and we shuffled out of the pharmacy. She paused as she left the store and turned back to Jonah. "I'll send one of the guards from the school to help you with him." She waved her hand in the direction of the unconscious man, and Jonah nodded.

I looked up at the night sky as we walked to Fiona's car. The stars were out and shining, and it felt like the sky went on for all eternity. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt like sky; free to go wherever I wanted. I wonder if I ever had been allowed to do that...

Fiona went around to the driver's side of the car and unlocked the doors. I managed to snag the front seat which forced Zach to get into the back seat that was littered with various devices half of which I didn't recognize. When we were buckled, Fiona still didn't start the car. Instead, she stared out of the windshield and down the road that led back to Gallagher. Without looking at either of us she said, "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't tell Rachel about this the second we get back to school."

Thankfully, I knew how to answer this. "Because if I have my information right, you are now in charge of security at Gallagher." I took her silence to mean I was right, so I continued. "And if you are the head of security that means you either knew about what Zach was doing to the security tonight and didn't report it right away, or never knew about it. Either way, it doesn't shine nicely on you."

"Did you know what I was doing?" Zach's curiosity got the better of him.

Fiona rubbed her face. "Of course I knew. The security at the school is too good for you to have gotten through it in just a week, Zachary."

I gaped at her. "So you let us go into town. Why?"

Fiona's eyes met mine for a millisecond before she put the keys into the ignition. She powered the car up and put it in drive before she answered. "Because I like being cooped up even less than you two do. Besides," She bit her lip. "It was the easiest way to get that agent."

"What?" Zach leaned forward as far as his seatbelt would let him. "You used us as bait?"

"Don't get your panties in a bunch, Mr. Almighty," Fiona exclaimed, and a giggle escaped me before I could help myself. Zach glared at me, but I ignored it. "I had all my agents in Roseville on the lookout tonight. It was a win-win situation. You get a night out, and we capture an enemy agent. And," Fiona's voice rose as it looked like Zach was about to interrupt. "It was the only way in hell I was about to let you 'sneak' off grounds. You were protected almost to the point of absurdity."

The car was quiet for a couple of minutes until the walls of Gallagher Academy became visible. "Get in back, Ms. Morgan." Fiona said. I unbuckled and shuffled over the console, almost falling right into Zach's arms. He grabbed a pile of blankets behind Fiona's seat and handed one to me.

"Do you hide people in your car often, Fiona?" Zach said. "Personally, I think it's a little amateur."

"Hey," She snapped. "It worked in Barcelona, and it'll work now. You better be thankful I keep blankets back there."

I heard him mutter, "Or worried." I smiled as I threw the blanket over my head and scooted down between the seats. The car slowed down as Fiona approached the gate. I heard the lowering of a window.

"Hey, Fiona." A man's deep voice said. "What was going on with Jonah?"

"An enemy agent walked right into the store. Must have recognized her from a previous mission or something." Her voice held the perfect amount of disinterest in it. I wished I could see through the blanket covering me to physically see her in action as she lied her ass off to a retired field agent. "I need you to send a couple of your men down to gather the agent up and send him to Langley."

"Will do." I heard the window start to go up, but it stopped as the man kept talking. "Did you figure out what that alarm was a while back?"

There was a split second of overwhelming tension, and I was absolutely certain we were about to get caught. Thankfully, Fiona's answer came swiftly. "False alarm. No enemy agents, just idiots from town." I could imagine her rolling her eyes as she said that.

The guy chuckled a little and then said his goodbyes. Fiona proceeded up the drive for another couple of minutes before pulling off the road. She parked the car, and I shed the blanket covering me. I saw Zach doing the same.

Fiona was already several paces away when I got out of the car. She looked like she was debating with herself. "Fiona?" I called.

She turned toward me. Her expression shifted as her eyes landed on my face. She sighed and said, "I suppose you want to know about Tillie."

I tried to not let my surprise show. I guess I really had no right to be as she was the head of security here. Obviously, she was tracking the research of the students. "Sorry?" I asked, giving her a confused smile.

She scowled at me, and I got the impression that I had disappointed her in some way. "Cut the crap, Morgan. I know about you and your friends' work. The hacking is impressive…covering it up, not so much."

I grimaced and felt Zach come up behind me. "Are you offering assistance or something?" He asked mockingly.

Fiona shrugged and said. "I was thinking more along the lines of advice." My eyebrows shot up. Tillie's partner was fine with us investigating her?

I can't keep myself from asking, "Why?"

Fiona looks down at the ground, contemplating. Her voice was subdued when she responded. "All of us spies, we're different, you know? I guess I'm a little odder than most in my ideas. And Tillie, she's…" Fiona looked around as if trying to find the words to explain the spy. "She's secretive. None of us like revealing pieces of ourselves but at the same time, we want to know everything about everyone else."

"I'm not sure I'm following." I said.

Fiona looked me in the eye. "I want to help because I want to know. Call it selfish or going behind her back, but in the end it's exactly what you're doing."

We stood there for a minute, none of saying anything. Finally, I said, "What's your advice?"

Fiona bit her lip, and I had a feeling it was to keep from smiling. "Stop looking in Langley. There isn't any damn point."

"But then how will get Tillie's background information?" Zach asked, sounding confused.

Fiona rolled her eyes. "Certainly not at Langley. Matilda isn't exactly the type to trust her life into the government. At least, that's how she's been for as long as I've known her. It might sound ironic as she works for the government but...Tillie's full of contradictions."

"So why do you need us?" I asked. "It seems like you know Tillie plenty well."

Fiona gave a small, sad smile. "Everyone lies. There's no point in saying we're honest people in our world because it's bullshit. No matter where we are, whether on assignment or at home we're living a cover." Her voice lowers so much, it almost gets lost in the wind. "Eventually it gets to the point where we don't even know the truth anymore. Who we are just disappears, and we end up just playing game after game. Lying becomes easier for us than being honest."

Something about the way Fiona said that pierced my heart. In the short time I'd known the woman I could see how solid she was; how thick her walls were. But when she was standing there telling me that, I could see that she wasn't all that different from me. She felt just as lost in what was going on as I did. She was just better at hiding it.

I wanted to tell her that she wasn't alone, and that I would help her. I wanted to hug her close and heal the unseen scars she carried. I started to speak up in an attempt to comfort her when she pulled herself together and reverted back to her normal impenetrable self. Her eyes were flinty as they stared into mine. "I'm sick of being lied to. I want to know the truth, and you can find it for me. Will you?"

My reply stuck in my throat, and I bit my lip. Zach was the one that spoke up and agreed. Fiona pursed her lips and nodded. Her shoulders seemed to relax as she turned around and started walking away. She glanced back at Zach and I where we were still standing and said, "The alarms for the front door are only down for another two minutes and thirty-three seconds. You might want to hurry."

He and I exchanged a glance before booting it towards the great double doors of Gallagher.

* * *

**I'm a little disappointed in myself. I wish I had put more action in. But what's done is done.**

**What do you think of Fiona's character? Is she believable enough? Do you think she has an ulterior motive?**

**And who do you like best of the new characters: Tillie, Fiona, or Jonah?**

**REVIEW and in return I'll put in a little *gasp* ROMANCE! OOOOH, girl fights dirty!**


	15. Chapter 15

**Heh, so my songs are getting a little loose on fitting my chapters. Oh, well. They work well enough. :)**

**Disclaimer: Ally Carter owns all, but don't let that keep you from reviewing!  
**

* * *

Chapter 15. _Not Alone _(by Sara Bareilles)

Zach and I had only just closed the front doors when we heard a whirring noise followed by a stampede of clicking. With a final _pop_ the doors locked into place, and silence engulfed us. There were no lights on; there was just the moonlight that cast long shadows along the walls. My skin prickled, and I found myself slinking in the shadows toward the stairs. There was something creepy about Gallagher that night, and I guess Zach felt it too as he mimicked my movements.

At the top of the stairs, Zach and I split ways for the night. I went left to the girls' area while he went to the right where the teachers' quarters were as the East Wing had been returned to its normal state after the Blackthorne Boys left. I looked over my shoulder before I turned the corner at the end of the hall and saw his retreating form. When I saw him start to do the same, I darted around the corner and rushed the rest of the way to my room.

I closed my door silently behind me. Bex, Macey, and Liz were all asleep so I didn't have to worry about explaining anything to them…yet. I hurried through my night routine, being careful of the weapon that still dangled around my wrist. After tonight, I was inclined to never take it off; a girl never knew when she'd run into someone who wanted to kidnap her.

I didn't get a lot of sleep that night. Everything kept running through my head. I just found it hard to believe that Fiona would really go behind her partner's back. But I was also starting to find it harder to believe that Tillie was trustworthy.

I needed answers. And apparently there weren't any at Langley, which begged the question where could they be?

-.-.-.-

"So let me get this straight," Liz said the next morning before breakfast. "You actually did go off grounds, there was a Circle agent there _but_ Fiona had her people stationed in town to take him out, Zach is now part of our team, and Fiona _wants _us to investigate Tillie?"

I kept my eyes stationed on my converse. They were getting worn-down; the tips were ripped and provided a peep show of my sock-covered big toes. I'd have to get new ones. All good things must come to an end, I guess. "Pretty much, Liz."

"Fiona totally pulled a Townsend there," Macey called from the bathroom. "Remember the amusement park? He used you as bait, too."

"Yeah, I remember." _How could I forget?_

"A spy does what is needed of a spy, I suppose." Macey said. I looked over my shoulder at her as she leaned over the bathroom sink and applied her mascara. "And Fiona sure is a spy." She stepped back and batted her eyelashes at her reflection. "Perfect."

I rolled my eyes and looked over at Bex. She was the only one who hadn't said anything yet. She stared intently at me before saying, "I still don't understand why Zach has to be on our team."

I sighed. Ever since finding out about Zach's mom, Bex had been a little anxious around him. "Because he won't tell us what he knows until we let him join up."

"But that's what he said about the date. What if he just keeps raising the bar for the information? What if it really isn't all that important?" Her eyes widened, and she glanced earnestly between the rest of us. "What if he doesn't even have any intel and is just jerking us around?"

I shook my head. "He knows something," And somehow I knew that was true. "And honestly, at this point, any information is worthwhile information."

Bex frowned and slumped down onto her bed. After a moment she said, "So if we can't find her file in Langley, then where else do we search?"

I couldn't answer that. I hadn't the slightest idea where else to search. My eyes wandered over to Liz, hoping she might have a suggestion, but she looked as lost as I felt. I sighed and lay down next to Bex, slinging my arm over my face.

I heard Macey come into the room. "Oh stop moping around," She said. I move my arm from my face and looked over at her. She was standing with her hands on her hips. "We start by going through our options." She looked around at us expectantly. She waved her hand in the air as if to urge us on. "Well, what are our options?"

Liz sighed. "Well, the whole list is Langley, Fiona, Headmistress Morgan, Zach, and, well, Cammie's memory of her." Liz had been ticking each point off with her fingers, but clenched her hands into fists as she finished speaking. "But Langley is no help, Fiona is asking _us_ for help, our attempt to talk to Cammie's mom was interrupted by Tillie herself, Zach is being a pain in buttocks, and as far as we know, the Tillie that Cammie knew as a babysitter was just a cover!"

"Is that really all we have?" Macey asked, a sly grin sliding on her face. "Are those our only choices?"

My brow furrowed. "What are you talking about, Macey?"

She opened her mouth to speak again, but there was a knock on the door. I sighed and stood up to answer the it though there was no need though as whoever was on the other side decided to waltz right in.

Three guesses as to who it was.

Zachary.

_Freaking._

Goode.

_Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Here is your prize: an infuriatingly annoying 7-year-old boy who just loves to antagonize you disguised in the body of a cute seventeen year old boy! Yay, let's celebrate!_ Note my sarcasm. I was not in the mood to deal with the boy today.

He smirked at me and looked around the room. "Having a meeting, I see. You should really include me in these types of things, you know," He settled down Liz's bed and winked at me. "Seeing as how I'm part of the team now and all."

I frowned at him. "What are you doing up? Or better yet, how did you get up here?" We were on the top floor; at least one of the girls below had to have seen him.

Zach just rolled his and, as only he can, pointed at himself and said, "Spy."

"Well, then get your spy booty out of our room," Bex said, standing up. "Can't you see we're indecent for company?"

He looked around. We were all wearing our uniforms and, in Macey's case, makeup. In fact, we had been on the verge of leaving for the Grand Hall. Zach looked back at Bex and said, "Yeah, I can tell you just woke up."

Bex muttered something about shovels and the dead of night before announcing that she was heading down to breakfast. She flounced out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Zach looked over at me from the corner of his eye and grinned at me. _Don't fall for it, don't fall for it…_ Damn it, I smiled back!

Macey gave a little cough, and my eyes flew to hers. I could see what she was planning, and I did my best to use ESP to make her stay right it was. But apparently, she was immune to my wide eyes. "Come on, Liz," She said, heading to the door. She slipped between Zach and me, winking at me as she went. "Let's make sure Bex hasn't accidentally punched some poor seventh grader in the nose."

Liz jumped off her bed, hesitating for a minute as she studied Zach. He felt her gaze on him and turned to stare back so she sped off with Macey. Out the door, leaving me all alone with _him._

_What ever happened to that pact they made that said two of them had to be with me at all times? _I wondered, _I miss that…_

As always, I acted very mature and avoided making eye contact with him. After a minute he said, "Gallagher Girl, I know my forehead is absurdly sexy, but can you look me in the eye for a minute? I do believe I'm supposed to tell you what I know about Matilda, but I'm not about to tell you that when you won't even look me in the eye."

I let my eyes wander down to his and quirked an eyebrow. "Oh, so you're finally going to make good on our deal?" And then I added, "Gallagher Guy."

Zach grimaced at the nickname, and I immediately noted to use it more often."Yes, I'm honoring our agreement. So," he stepped closer to me. "Wanna hear something juicy?"

I was getting uncomfortable with how close he was to me. "Actually, now that you're officially an operative with the rest of usrather than just an asset, I don't think we should discuss anything imperative to the mission without the rest of our team." I gave a megawatt smile and backed away to the door. "Sound good?"

He gave a half smile and ran a hand through his hair. "Sure. Let's go have breakfast first." He passed me and reached the door before me, opening it up so I would walk through. I shot him a suspicious glance as I walked by him, but he just looked at me with oh-so-innocent eyes. Too innocent, if you ask me.

And sure enough, as I started down the hallway, I felt a hand tug at mine. I spun around and found myself chest-to-chest with Zach. He looked down at me with a twinkle in his eyes, and I couldn't help it. I grabbed his face, and I kissed him. His arms wrapped around my waist, and I let my hands run through his hair. I let myself get lost in the kiss, so it took me a minute to realize there was someone standing behind me.

I jumped away from Zach like I had just been electrocuted. Macey was standing just a few feet down the hall. For the first time ever, she looked...bashful. "I, uh, forgot my COW notes," She said. She slipped past Zach and I quickly and into our room, shutting the door behind her.

"So..." Zach said. He had this cocky grin on his face. I wanted to slap it off him. _God, I'm getting a little violent in my innermost thoughts, aren't I? Oh, well. He'd deserve it._ "Should we go to breakfast or pick up where we left off?" He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at me, and I had to restrain myself from turning the slap into a punch.

"_You _will go to breakfast, and _I_ will go make sure that _Macey_ isn't scarred for life," I said.

His eyes reached towards the heavens. "Please, she owed us for that time on the train." When he saw my lips thin, he let it go. "Okay, okay. I'll go eat all by my lonesome." He started walking down the hall before turning around and calling, "My lips miss you already!"

I took a deep calming breath, ignored him, and went to talk to Macey. "Hey," I said, closing the door softly behind me.

"Hey." She was on her bed flipping through a book. "So, I guess you sent Loverboy off."

"Yep, a girl's gotta have her space."

She smiled a little. "Maybe I was being stupid, but I thought that when I left you two alone, you knew to lay down the law on him," She looked at me. "Not lay your tongue in his mouth."

I blushed. "It was very sudden."

She laughed and stood up, her book in hand. "Well, I can't say I'm upset. Your guys' sexual tension was suffocating me."

"We do not have sexual tension!"

Macey laughed again. She tucked her hair behind her ear with her free hand, and I looked a little closer at the book in her other one. My brow furrowed. That wasn't just any book.

"What are you doing with my dad's journal?"

"Research." Confusion coursed through my veins and then anger.

"You are not using my dad's journal for extra credit, Macey."

She just gave me a weird look. "Of course not. Like I told you before Mr. Lovely Lips waltzed in here, there must be more information out there that we can obtain."

I gestured to my dad's journal. "And you think that's one of them."

The sly grin on her face told me that that was exactly what she was thinking. I sighed. "I guess I'll be passing on breakfast today."

"No need. Liz and I caught up with Bex on her way to the Grand Hall. The two of them are sneaking breakfast up here as we speak." She paused. "I think we can keep Loverboy out of this just for today. I'd like to ask him a couple of questions before he's let on the team."

I just gave a half-smile and plopped down floor criss-cross applesaucing my legs. Macey sat down next to me, and we cracked open my dad's journal once again. Bex and Liz got back a couple minutes later with muffins, and apples, and scones and over our stolen meal, we finally took the time to read through all of my dad's entries.

* * *

**What do you think? Was it goode? I'll try and get Chapter 16 up ASAP, but school has started up again, and my teachers are already piling the homework on me.**

**Also, since this is Chapter 15 (HOLY PALOOZA!) can we try and get 10 reviews for it?**

**Thanks for reading!  
**


	16. Chapter 16

_**Disclaimer: I don't own anything except the characters I made up. The rest belongs to Ally Carter.**_

**I was avoiding my American Studies homework and decided to write this. Hope you like it, lovely readers!**

**Oh, and who here watches _White Collar_ or_ Chuck_? Because personally, I think Matt Bomer would be an excellent Mr. Solomon. And maybe I'm being a little crazy here, but I've suddenly realized that I picture Cammie and Zach as the younger versions of Sarah and Chuck.**

**Who do you see them as?  
**

* * *

Chapter 16. _Secret _(by The Pierces)

**Day 3,184**

**Operative Morgan received word from the Deputy Director that he would be obtaining an apprentice in the coming month. The apprentice is a recent graduate and is being considered for a position in the CIA. Operative Morgan's mission is to ascertain that the apprentice is, in fact, loyal as there have been disputes over such things where her family and education are concerned.**

** Operative Morgan is determined not to let this affect his progress on the Circle.**

**Day 3,205**

**Miss Matilda Henderson arrived the night before last. As of yet she appears to be quiet, withdrawn. Operatives Morgan and Solomon have discussed the fact that she went to the Institute of Credgewall for Young Men and Women and have decided that it could be highly beneficial to ask her about her experiences.**

.

I'd never heard of a place called Credgewall before. I'd never even heard of a rumor about a co-ed spy school. I kept reading to see if there was anything more about it.

.

**Day 3,206**

**Henderson refuses to comment on her schooling.**

**Day 3,249**

**Operative Morgan put Agent Henderson out in the field tonight. She proved most exceptional. Credgewall taught her well.**

** She is starting to offer up more information on the activities of her school. Operatives Morgan and Solomon are almost positive in their suspicions now.**

**Day 3,286**

**It's true. Credgewall is more than what it seems. Even more than what Blackthorne seems. Agent Henderson has requested to officially join the Operatives on their unofficial mission. After careful consideration, they have agreed.**

.

What did that mean? _Credgewall is more than it seems…_ Did that mean it was a school for assassins like Blackthorne?

.

**Day 3,582**

**Operative Henderson's mentorship is now over. The Deputy Director requested she report to Langley, but she refused. She says she cannot abandon this mission. Operative Morgan suspects Henderson's reluctance to leave has less to do with the mission and more to do with her own personal issues.**

** Either way, Operatives Morgan and Solomon are relieved to have her on the team indefinitely. Her skills have already proven invaluable.**

**Day 3,601**

**Operative Henderson gave us her estimate on the number of alumni she believes are doubling up at Credgewall. They don't look good.**

**Day 3,842**

**Operative Henderson has started telling her fellow Operatives about her experiences at Credgewall. How a student could even begin to think of torturing one of their classmates is a mystery to Operative Morgan. But Matilda did. She had to or they'd do it to her.**

.

Beside me, I could feel Liz stiffen. I myself zoned out for a minute before returning back to the journal.

.

**Day 4,131**

**The note system is set up. Operatives Morgan and Henderson are very optimistic that it will help keep any confusion from blossoming. Operative Solomon is not quite on the same line of thinking.**

** The Operatives have caught two more double agents this past month, but neither gave up any information that was true. The Operatives believe the Circle is now onto them.**

**Day 4,489**

**Operative Henderson has branched out to investigate Asia with her own team. Operatives Morgan and Solomon are staying in D.C. as they do not have the luxury of leaving as they will. They do still work for the CIA after all. Henderson's leaving is displeasing as she was the best interrogator on the team, and now Operative Morgan might need to get a new babysitter.**

** The Operatives are getting closer to the Circle. They believe they might have found a lead somewhere in Europe.**

**Day 4,918**

**The Operatives' asset has disappeared. They are not satisfied but also not discouraged.**

**Day 5,113**

**Operative Morgan missed his daughter's birthday; his wife was not happy. However, the sacrifice was necessary as he was following a new lead in Argentina. Operative Solomon is heading there now with Operative Henderson on the alert for backup.**

**Day 5,432**

**Operative Henderson called in a new lead from where she is stationed in Europe. The asset is a former professor of Blackthorne and claims he has information on the recruiting that went on during his time there. He also has contacts that could be useful.**

** Operative Solomon is leaving immediately to meet with him.**

**Day 5,786**

**The asset is having trouble with a tail. Operative Solomon will relocate him to Athens. Operative Morgan will not accompany him as he and Operative Henderson have been asked to partner on a mission for The Agency.**

**Day 5,846**

**Operatives Morgan and Henderson got into an argument over one of their notes again. Operative Solomon retains his position that the note system never really worked.**

** Henderson left again, this time to Central America. She is not expected back for at least a year.**

**Day 5,854**

**Not much headway has been made in recent months concerning the Circle. It is very distressing to the Operatives. Who knows what the Circle could be planning right now?**

** The Operatives are waiting to hear from their asset in Athens.**

**Day 5,860**

**The Operatives received word from their asset…**

.

I stopped reading at that point. I didn't need to hear the end of the story again.

"So…" I said, closing the book with a snap. I didn't continue the sentence though. I didn't know how to.

"Has anyone even heard of a place called Credgewall?" Bex asked. "Because I gotta say that I thought it was just Gallagher and Blackthorne."

"That's what we all assumed. No one ever led us to believe anything different." Macey said.

Liz bit her lip. "It's our own fault really. We should've realized that if there was a spy school for boys there might also be a spy school for both boys and girls," she said.

"A freaking twisted one at that," Macey muttered. Liz shook her head disapprovingly, and Macey turned to her. "Do you disagree? I'm sorry, but did you read all of that? Torture, Liz. It says plain and simple that Tillie _tortured _her classmates."

I rubbed my hands across my face. I couldn't process the idea of Tillie hurting someone else. To me, it was like imagining me hurting one of three girls in the room with me; unthinkable, impossible. It took me a minute to realize that Bex, Macey, and Liz were watching me, waiting for my reaction so they'd know what to do. I let out a deep breath that I hadn't known I was holding.

"Bex, Macey, I know you two aren't very happy about Zach being on the team, but he is now so I think we should keep him informed." I turned to Liz. "Can you fill him in?" She nodded and left the room to find him. I stood up after she was gone and took a minute to actually think things through. I needed to know more about Credgewall, about what went on there. "I'm going to go talk to Fiona."

Bex nodded. "I'll come with you."

"No, you stay here. I want you and Macey to read through the journal again, look for things we might have missed. If Liz brings Zach here tell him we need to see Mr. Solomon's journal." And then I added, "And that we need to hear what he knows."

I left quickly before they could say anything more. I didn't go straight to Fiona's room to see if she was there; instead, I wandered the halls, trying to get the thoughts racing in my head to pause if only for a moment so I could sort them out. My attempts proved fruitless so I gave up on them and decided to find Fiona.

She took a while to find as she wasn't in her rooms or the Grand Hall or by the gates with the guards. After a half an hour of searching, I found her sitting all alone by the lake, feeding the pigeons. She heard me come up behind her.

"I used to do this in my free time when I studied here," She said, tossing her last couple pieces of bread to her far right. "When I first got here, it was the closest I could get to home. Feeding birds." She gave a little smile and then looked at me. "What do you need?"

I sat down next to her and stared out across the lake. "Clarity." Fiona cocked her head to the side in confusion. "Have you heard of a place called Credgewall?"

Even without looking at her, I noticed Fiona's change of expression. Her face closed down, and her lips pursed. "What about it?"

I turned to look her in the eyes. "I think Tillie went there."

Fiona stiffened even more and said in an icy voice, "You should be careful about making accusations like that."

"Why? What went on there? Is it…do they really hurt their classmates?" The words flowed out of me before I could stop them. I didn't want to stop them. "Did you know Tillie went th—"

Fiona's upheld hand cut me off. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "No one except the people that went there know what went on there. Yes, they did hurt people. And no," Fiona opened her eyes and looked into mine. They were wide, open, scared. "I didn't know Tillie went there."

"Did? Does that mean they've changed like Blackthorne is starting to change?"

A wind picked up around the two of us, blowing our loose hair around. I was wearing my jacket and jeans with a hat covering my head so I wasn't cold, but I still found goose bumps rising on my arms. Maybe it was because I subconsciously guessed what was coming before I _knew _it was coming.

"No, it was shut down," Fiona said. "The government lost control of it."

Confusion washed over me yet again. It was an emotion I was becoming well acquainted with. _Hi, how do you do, Confusion? I'm Cammie, and I'd like you to meet someone named ANGER!_

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I spat out. "You can't say something like that and not explain it."

The skin around Fiona's eyes tightened, and before I knew it, her face had gotten very close to mine. "You want the whole story, Morgan? Fine. Just to give you fair warning though, it'll take a while, and it isn't very pretty."

I tried to scoot farther away from her, but she grabbed my arm, keeping me locked where I was. "Well, do you want to know or what? I figure I owe you for telling me Tillie went there. Might as well give you the nightmares, too."

I struggled against her hold on my arm but it wouldn't give. "What do you mean you owe me? You told me tell to you what I found out about her just yesterday!"

The expression on her face softened, and she pulled her face back away from mine. She didn't let go of my arm though. "I know, and now you're asking me about Credgewall so I guess we'll be even." She paused and licked her lips. "Cammie, Credgewall wasn't a school for spies like Gallagher is or a school for assassins like Blackthorne. Originally, of course, it was an espionage school for the government but…over time its goal changed. Its teachings changed."

I looked at her, waiting for her to continue. For a moment, that's all there was in the world; the suspense that leads up to a realization was all I felt. And then Fiona continued talking, and everything zoomed back into reality, and I wished that I could have stayed in that limbo because it was so much safer.

"Credgewall stopped being a school for spies and turned into a school for, simply put, double agents."

* * *

**Can we _pretty please_ try and get to 10 reviews again?**

**I'm sorry if I'm coming off a little needy right now, but I've got this crazy hope that we can get to 100 reviews by Chapter 20.**

**I'M A PSYCHO, I KNOW. But maybe we can be psychos together?**

**And, as a little incentive, get me ten reviews and I'll get you the next chapter faster.  
**


	17. Chapter 17

**_Disclaimer: I only own the stuff I made up. Sadly, that does NOT includes one Zachary Goode. *sigh*_**

**Quick Note: In Chapter 12 I mentioned someone named Cassandra. That's my name for Zach's mom since I couldn't find a point where they mentioned her name in the books._  
_**

**REVIEW AND I'LL UPDATE FASTER!_  
_**

* * *

Chapter 17.

"Credgewall was started much like Gallagher was. An unknown hero of the government started a school where they could teach future generations to defend their country," Fiona said. "Its founder, Gregory Credge, began it with his children and their friends.

"What you have to understand is that the government wasn't inclined to think badly of Credgewall because it was one of the original espionage schools of the country. Credge was a Revolutionary soldier alongside George Washington. And when it was first created, it really was a good school that taught what Gallagher teaches. Honor, loyalty, respect. What made it even better was that both boys and girls were accepted. For over a century and a half, every spy wanted their child to be asked to come to Credgewall. It was the best, and everyone knew it."

Fiona paused and looked at me. She looked as though she was begging me to understand something. I urged her to continue. "But then something happened?"

She sighed. "Yes. As you know, Gallagher was started after the Civil War, and then Blackthorne was started shortly after. Their standards were just as high as Credgewall's, and I don't know if it was because they couldn't handle the new competition or had already begun to get tired of their normal routine of doing everything the government asked for, but Credgewall began to change. It wasn't obvious at first; in fact, it wasn't until after the First World War that we noticed anything.

"That was about the time that double agents first began to emerge as a major problem."

"How did they connect the dots?" I asked.

Fiona bit her lip and took a moment to respond. "They caught a few rogue agents, all of whom were Credgewall alumni. From what I gather, it took several years for them to start talking. When they did, new light was shone on the school.

"From that point on, the information gets sparse. Most of the rest of the story is highly classified or burned." She had been looking out across the pond through the whole story, but now turned back to me. "The rest of what I know comes from what I've been briefed on when it pertains to my missions."

She looked at me expectantly, waiting for my nod to keep going. I did so, and she continued in a shaky voice, "The government tried to regain control of the school, get its curriculum back in check, and for several years, it seemed to be working. But then, we got involved in World War Two, and Credgewall sunk right back into its old habits. I don't know what kinds of things they did there; all I know is that whatever their activities were, it's enough to make Blackthorne look like a school for pansies."

When she didn't continue, I said, "My source said that they…the students tortured one another. Do you know if that's true?"

Fiona just looked at me with sad eyes, and I didn't need her to confirm it out loud to know it was true. I shiver went through me. "But Credgewall is closed now. Why did it take them so long to close the school?"

"Hope," She said. "CIA, NSA, Interpol were all still holding on to the hope that it was just a phase, that the next headmaster or mistress would right the wrongs done before them. It never happened, so they shut down the school six years ago. The year I graduated actually."

"And what happened to the students that went there?" My eyes widened when a thought came to me that maybe they had been shut down, too. That they had been considered and threat taken out. Fiona seemed to guess my train of thought and quickly mollified me.

"A few of the younger students were relocated to Gallagher and Blackthorne. Most however just went home or ran off before the government could question them." She frowned a little. "Probably joined up with the Circle."

We were quiet for a few minutes. The pigeons were picking at the last bits of bread that Fiona had thrown off and were the only things that moved. Even the wind had died down, making the trees seem stoic and almost mournful.

Finally, I said to Fiona, "So does that mean that you think Tillie's a…a double agent?"

She opened her mouth to answer me, but the voice that replied came from behind us. "No." The both of whipped our heads around to see my mother, standing with her arms crossed and eyes narrow. "You two should know better than to have a conversation like that out in the open for anyone to hear."

It was true, I did know better and the fact that I had forgotten to move to a more secure location made me feel ashamed. Seriously, what kind of spy was I? Mom sighed and motioned for both Fiona and I to follow her. We reluctantly got to our feet and followed her across the grounds, into Gallagher, up the stairs, down the Hall of History, and into her office.

The first thing she did when we got in her office was to lock the door. The second thing was to turn to me and say, "Care to tell me how you found out about Credgewall?"

I fought the urge to look down at the carpet and stared in her right in the eyes. "Dad's journal."

Her face twisted like she hadn't been expecting that answer. _What, had she thought someone specific had told me?_

I thought back to what she had said by the lake. "Why don't you think Tillie's a double agent?"

"For the exact same reason that I don't think Zachary's mother is loyal to The Agency. Bad schools can turn out good students just as good schools can turn out bad ones," She said as she sat down behind her desk. "Tillie is not by any means innocent. But she is completely against the Circle."

Fiona fell gracelessly into a chair in front my mom's desk and let out a deep sigh of relief. I took the seat beside her and said, "And why is she against the Circle? If she went to Credgewall and they practically taught her how to fool the government and get the best of both worlds…"

Mom looked at me like she was gauging my reaction to her next words. "Tillie had a somewhat unconventional upbringing. I guess you could say she was the female version of Zachary as a child."

My mouth popped open in an 'o' formation as I realized what she meant. "Her mom…"

Fiona finished for me. "Worked for the Circle? Wouldn't that make her more inclined to join up, to follow in her mother's footsteps?" She was sitting as straight up as a pole now, her relief gone.

"Not if her mother wasn't in her good graces." Mom paused and gave a little frown. "I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to tell you anymore. I've already said too much. I advise you to ask Tillie yourself. If she doesn't want to tell you, then drop the subject. This is one of those times where we have to forget our training and use our common sense."

With that, she opened a folder on her desk and started filling it out, and I knew the discussion was over. She wouldn't be saying anything more, so I got up from my chair without another word and left the room.

-.-.-.-

I avoided going back to my room. So much had been discovered today, and I just wanted time to process it all on my own. It wasn't until I was in front of the door to the infirmary that I realized I'd been heading there the whole time.

I hesitated for a moment before pushing the door open. It was colder in here, and I tugged my jacket closer to myself. I walked down the hall slowly, the sound of my shoes as they hit the floor creating an echo along the long, white walls. At the end of the hall, I turned the knob on the door to my right.

He was awake, reading through notes of some sort. He looked up when the door opened and moved his notes to his bed stand when he saw it was me. "I haven't seen you in a while, Cammie."

And that's all it took. One minute I was standing in his doorway and the next I was bawling into Mr. Solomon's shoulder. He seemed caught off guard for a couple of seconds before he brought his arms around me.

It took eleven minutes and thirty two seconds for me to finish crying, but he didn't show any signs of impatience. He just sat there, smoothing my hair and telling me it was going to be okay. Finally, I pulled away and wiped the last few tears from my cheeks.

He watched me with careful eyes. "What happened?"

I took a couple shaky breaths and then told him about reading the journal, finding out about Tillie, about Credgewall. He didn't seem surprised or angry at my discoveries, just…calm. After I had finished the story he didn't say anything for a minute.

Then, "I can see why you might be a little upset with Matilda right now."

"A little?" I let out a small, hysteric laugh. "I'm completely outraged. Why didn't she think she could trust me?"

Mr. Solomon gave me a stern look like he couldn't believe I had just said that. "Because you're young, inexperienced, and because she knew you'd react in the exact same manner that you are now."

"If by reacting you mean freaking out, then yeah, I am reacting," I exclaimed. I couldn't believe he was taking her side on this. "I just found out that one of my oldest friends went to a school for _double agents._" I hissed the last two words out.

He just shook his head. "Cameron, I thought you would understand by now that, as spies, we keep secrets for a reason. Otherwise, people get hurt. Lives are endangered. Matilda had good reasons for not telling just anyone where she was educated."

"Oh, like what?"

"Well, for one, I doubt Matilda is very keen on getting killed. And trust me, a lot of agents want all of Credgewall's alumni gone. And two, she isn't exactly proud that she went there or the things she did as a student."

My reply got stuck in my throat as the fight went out of me. "You're right. I'm sorry. I don't know what's gotten into me."

Mr. Solomon gave me a small smile. "You've had a lot put upon you today. I don't exactly blame you for throwing a fuss." He paused. "Just don't let it happen again. You're growing up and are on your way to being a spy. That means that a lot of shockers will be thrown at you, and you'll have to be able to manage them."

I nodded, knowing he was right. Then, I remembered something from my dad's journal. "What kind of note system did my dad and Tillie set up? Why didn't you think it would work?"

He sighed. "It was just a way the two of them had to communicate during their missions. I thought it was inefficient. It was outdated and risky. They thought it would work because it wasn't used very often anymore so not as many people would think to follow a letter."

"But it didn't work." I assumed.

"Actually, they made it work fairly well for a few years." He shrugged. "Then, one of their notes got compromised, and they stopped using the system. Decided playing the classic spy character wasn't worth the risk anymore."

I thought on that for a moment before deciding I should head back to my room. I promised to visit him again soon and stood up. I stopped at the door to ask him one more question.

"Do you trust Tillie?"

He didn't answer right away, and I started to worry. My calm façade started to crack, but then he replied and made me feel better.

"She's one of the few that I do."

* * *

**I'll put up Chapter 18 when we get to 80 reviews! So you might want to get a-typing!**

**Oh, and I've written a poem:**

_A poem for those of you,_

_Who have written me such nice reviews._

_You make my day,_

_And make me say,_

_"I think I'll write a new chapter today!"_

_There is literally only,_

_One in every hundred of ye._

_So as thanks, Zach and Cammie_

_Will soon be sitting in a tree,_

_K-I-S-S-I-N-G!  
_


	18. Chapter 18

**I forgot to put the song up for Chapter 17! Bad Peppy! It's **_**Basket Case **_**by Sara Bareilles. **

**And I know this is shorter than usual, and I am soooo sorry about that! My only excuse is that I've had four tests to study for, three outlines to write, and literally 60 math problems a night to do. Forgive me? Also, there may be delays once in a while as I write this chapter by chapter, unlike those super-awesome-over-achiever people who intimidate me and write the entire story before posting chapter one.**

**AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE REVIEWS. FOR THOSE WHO ASKED, the poem is somewhat of a foreshadow. Somewhat. I want to start building up Zach and Cammie's relationship so we'll see how it goes...**

Chapter 18. _I'm Not Calling You a Liar _(by Florence + the Machine)

Bex, Liz, and Macey weren't in our room when I got back. But Zach was. He was leaning up against my bookshelf where it was situated across the room from the door. His hands were tucked into his jeans pockets, and his head was down making him look like he had fallen asleep standing up.

I shut the door behind me. "Hi." I sighed.

He lifted his head up to stare at me, looking oddly mournful. "Cat's out of the bag, I guess."

I knew what he was talking about. "You were right. She can't be trusted."

He frowned and stepped away from the bookshelf. "Actually…I'm not so sure anymore."

"But you said…"

"I know what I said," He said, shrugging. "But I've been rethinking things for a while now." His eyes locked with mine. "I told your friends what I know."

"Good." I said. I took a seat on my bed and patted the spot on the bed next to me, indicating for him to sit as well. "Now, tell me."

He sat down slowly and watched me cautiously like he thought I might snap at him. It was my fault I suppose; I had been having such awfully extreme mood swings as of late. "Well, I knew from Mr. Solomon's journal that Matilda went to Credgewall which I knew from my mother was one of their main recruiting sites," He said. "I know that the Circle has been trying to recruit her for years. And I know that she isn't signed to any single company so I thought it safe to assume that she might be earning from both sides."

My voice came out close to a whisper. "Do you know why the Circle wants her?"

"For one, she went to Credgewall," He said, ticking his fingers off as he went. "Two, she's done all kinds of ops for almost every major U.S. government agency. Three, she is one of the best spies in her area of expertise. And four…"

I finished his sentence. "She can get to me." Zach nodded his agreement. I sighed. "But she hasn't ever done any jobs for the Circle?"

"As far as I know. Which I'm starting to wonder was ever much."

I felt a shift in that moment. It was like the world had tilted; not enough to make you fall but enough to cause a stumble. And suddenly, I found myself leaning into him. Before I knew it I was hugging him, and he was hugging me back. We stayed like that for a minute, an hour, an eternity; I didn't keep track of the time.

Eventually, I pulled away. I had a new determination. "We'll figure everything out," I said. "There's no other option. I want to know why they want me."

Zach just looked at me for a minute. Then, he grabbed my hand and said, "Of course, we will."

-.-.-.-

The rest of the weekend passed by slowly. Bex, Macey, Liz, Zach, and I holed up in the dorm room and talked over what to do next. Bex was all for confronting Tillie straight up, but the rest of us weren't too sure. Liz suggested we bug her rooms, but I knew that Tillie would find them.

After hours of debating, we had gotten nowhere. And so it was with a heavy heart, a confused brain, and tired eyes that we went to our classes on Monday. When CoveOps rolled around, I was still undecided on how I was going to react when I saw Tillie.

In the end, I didn't need to decide. Tillie never showed up for class; instead, Fiona did. That is, she pushed Mr. Solomon's wheelchair into the room.

"Good morning, class," He said as he and stopped at the front of the room. "Ms. Henderson was not able to be here today and asked me to fill in for her. I hope you're all right with that."

It took a second for all of us to become unfrozen before we rushed to say that yes, we had no problem having him back with us. At the same time however, part of my mind was wondering where Tillie was. I saw Bex shoot me a quick, confused glance and knew she was thinking the same thing I was.

The hour passed smoothly. It was refreshing and exciting having Mr. Solomon teach us again. It was like taking a giant bite of chocolate cake after a month without sweets. So. Damn. Good.

At the end of class Bex, Zach, and I hung back a bit, hoping to have a word with Mr. Solomon. However, he and Fiona had other plans as they wheeled out of there faster than Forrest Gump ran from those bullies.

To say I was frustrated would be putting it lightly. I wasn't going to put up with being avoided. First, however, I had to go to P&E. It turned out to be a good thing, though, as I got to let out some of my frustrations. I'm not sure that Bex and Zach agreed that it was a good thing though, as they left classes with a few more bruises than usual.

I didn't walk with them back to the main building. Instead, I darted off, not just to avoid their accusing glares as they rubbed their backs and arms but to get to Tillie's room. If the odds were in my favor, she would be there. If they weren't, then I'd tear down this entire school brick by brick until she turned up.

-.-.-.-

Tillie's room was at the end of a long, half-lit hall at the very top of the Teacher's Lodging part of the school. The door could very well have been as old as the Gallagher Mansion was; it had an air of experience and wisdom (if a door could have such qualities). And for a second, it intimidated me, and I considered leaving.

_I have no business here,_ I thought, _Tillie's life is Tillie's life and I shouldn't meddle in it._

But then I remembered that a door is just a door and that if I was ever going to be able to trust Tillie the way Mr. Solomon supposedly did, then I needed to know her story. And so I knocked on the door.

And waited.

And waited…

After standing outside the door for five minutes and thirteen seconds without hearing any sound from the other side, I had almost given up. I was just drawing breath into my lungs to give a whole-hearted sigh when I heard the grind of a chain against a door and the clicking of numerous locks coming undone.

The door swung open with a small creak and there was Tillie. Instead of the smooth pencil skirt and V-necked sweater I'd become accustomed to seeing her in, she was in flannel pajamas pants and a Snoopy t-shirt that was three sizes too big. Her hair was in a sloppy ponytail, her makeup was smeared.

"Cammie!" She said, sounding somewhat surprised. I was a little speechless from taking in her disheveled appearance so she spoke again. "I know I look like shit, okay? I've just been having a couple of bad days."

My eyes snapped to hers, and I found my voice again. "What kind of bad days?" Did she know I knew?

She rolled her eyes and motioned behind her, where her room was littered with tissues that had missed the trash bin. "The kind of bad days that have me congested and whining about my throbbing head." There was a small pause. "Did you want to ask me something?"

"I was wondering why you weren't in class today."

She gave me a smile. "Well, I guess you know now."

I laughed a little. "Yeah, I guess I do. I'll go then." I started backing down the hall as she smiled confusedly at me. She started closing the door and in a moment of bravery (or stupidity) I blurted out, "I know you went to Credgewall."

Tillie froze. I could only see half her face now but it was enough to know that I had shocked her. The one eye of hers that I could see bored into both of mine, and seemed to grow in size. Her face paled, and her mouth popped open a little bit in an "o" formation. And then, as quickly as the expression came to her, it was gone and replaced with one of complete indifference.

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about, Ms. Morgan." She said. And then her door was closed, the locks and chain being slid back into place.

I only stood in the dark hall for a moment more before walking away slowly. My pace quickened as I got further away from that hall, that room, that complete and utter lie.

I didn't stop or knock at the next door I came to. I burst right into the room, startling its sole occupant. When he saw my face, he shoved his books away and stood up from his desk. "Cammie—"

I cut him off and rushed over to him. "Just hold me."

Zach's arms wrapped around me as the first tears fell. He didn't ask what had me so upset, and I was glad because to be honest, I didn't know the answer to that question. Tillie's reply to my outburst was to be expected. She was a spy, and no self-respecting spy would undermine themselves by admitting they went to a school like Credgewall.

Still, it hurt.

* * *

**Next post at 95 reviews. :)**

**And am I making Cammie cry too much? I don't mean to. I actually sort of want her to be all badass and strong as steel.**


	19. Chapter 19

**So, I swear I meant to update earlier. As in like a month ago, regardless of the amount of the reviews. But then I misplaced my flash drive which had this chapter on it and my internet freaked on me and...now it's the end of November, and I feel like a terrible person for not updating earlier.**

**Anyways, the internet's working again (for now), and I found my flash drive. So hopefully, school stays calm enough that I'll be able to update again by my Winter Break.**

**ENJOY! :)**

* * *

Chapter 19.

Tillie was back in class the next day. She was straight-forward, put-together, and very not affected by what had happened less than twenty-four hours ago. It reminded me very much of how she had been after her argument with my mom.

She started speaking immediately. "Mistakes. You've heard it long before this class and you'll here it again long after it. They cost lives. From the simplest, smallest slip of the tongue—" Tillie gestured to Tina who shrunk a little in her seat. Everyone knew she was the gossip queen at Gallagher. "—to something like forgetting who your cover's most trusted confidant is or where and what time you're supposed to meet up with an asset."

There wasn't a sound in the room as Tillie looked around at us. "They can cost not just us our lives and reputations but also those of our team. Therefore, I'll teach you how not to make them."

A couple of us gave her confused looks. How was she going to teach us how to protect us from ourselves?

"The first rule is to be prepared." She said, walking down the aisles. "Why do you need to be prepared, Ms. Alvarez?"

"Because you don't want to go into a mission blind." Eva replied instantly.

Tillie quirked her lips into a little smile but it didn't reach her eyes. "Obviously. But why don't you want to go in blind?" Eva didn't respond so Tillie swept her gaze across the whole room. "Mr. Goode, would like to enlighten us?"

Zach didn't hesitate to respond. "You need back-up plans. There's always room for error and if that were to happen, you need to have a strategy."

"Exactly." Tillie said with half a smile. "Strategy is the key to making it in this business. Do you think I would have gotten where I am today by going in with no limits and no expectations?" Her gaze landed on me for a second. "I always have a plan."

Tillie lectured for another forty-three minutes until the bell rang and everyone began filing out. Tillie lagged behind, however, seeming to know from the pointed looks I'd been giving her all hour that I needed to talk to her.

"Cammie, dear, thank you for dropping by yesterday to see how I was doing. It was very thoughtful." She said, grasping one of my hands in hers and squeezing it.

I looked at a little confusedly. "Um, ok. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about though. I mean, it's about yesterday but not about you being sick." Tillie's grip on my hand tightened the slightest bit.

"I'm feeling much better now," She said. The smile she had on her face as she said this was unnaturally bright, like Sunny D.

My brow knitted together and I felt my back muscles tighten like they always did right before Coach whistled for us to begin our sparring matches. I was preparing for a fight, one that I wasn't sure I could ever be ready for. "Don't try to veer me off the subject, Tillie," I said. "I know. And I know you know I know."

Tillie tilted her head at me. "Huh?"

"I know you went to Credgewall. And while I'm not completely sure as to what that entirely means, I can deduce that it isn't so great," I said, making sure to keep my voice down in case someone were to enter the classroom.

Tillie gave me a shrewd smile. "I think you know exactly what being a Credgewall graduate means, Cameron."

"No, I really don't," I exclaimed, shaking my head to emphasize my point. Tillie gave a little snort and rolled her eyes. And frankly, that was the final shake to the already fizzing soda can. I locked my fingers around her wrist in a vice grip and forced her to look at me again. "But you're going to tell me."

Tillie tried to pull her hand away, but I wouldn't budge. "I'm not letting you leave until you give me the answers I need."

"Need or want?" Tillie snarled at me. Her face, usually so happy and sweet, morphed into a foul beast. I nearly stumbled backward from the sudden change but caught myself in time and managed to maintain my hold on her arm.

"Matilda, please." At this point, I knew desperation coated every syllable coming from my mouth, but I couldn't find it in me to care anymore. It almost seemed as if my sanity rested on getting these answers and getting at least one mystery in my life solved. Not to be melodramatic or anything…

Tillie seemed to hesitate for a moment and just as I had long ago realized how her perky attitude was just a façade, I saw how her hostility was as well. Finally, she sighed and when she spoke it was with the saddest resignation I'd ever heard in my life. "You don't need me to tell you, Cammie. You know the answer to what you're asking me. Just like you knew what it was the Blackthorne Boys were being trained to do. You just have to let yourself admit it."

I licked my lips and tightened my grip on her. "Don't talk to me in riddles."

"I can't tell you," She said. Her eyes widened in earnestness. "I won't. If you can't figure it out on your own, then you'll never know because I'll _never_ say those words aloud."

With that, Tillie tore her wrist from my grasp and grabbed her bag. Before I could stop her, she was through the doorjamb and out of sight. I stood alone in the classroom for a moment. My head ran in circles as I tried to piece together what Tillie had said.

But as is the case when you run in circles, I just ended up right where I had been in the beginning. Confused as hell.

-.-.-.-

"How can you know what Tillie is but at the same time _not_ know what she is?" Bex said tossing a juggling ball she had swiped from Mr. M into the air. "That's not possible."

"It could be hidden in her subconscious," Liz said. She gripped her pen to her chest and sent hopeful eyes my way. "I could do some tests on you in your sleep. I promise not to turn it in as an extra credit project!"

I shook my head at Liz as the door opened, letting Macey and Zach in. "Still stumped on what Tillie is?" Macey asked.

"Yep." Bex popped the 'p' at the end of the word and then harrumphed as Zach snatched the juggling ball away from her mid-toss. She sat up from her sprawled-out position on her bed and sent an evil glare toward Zach who pretended not to notice. "I still maintain the theory that she's a ninja assassin from the future sent to rid us of Osama Bin Laden."

"Then why would she be here at Gallagher and not somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan?" Zach said. Bex opened her mouth and then, not having an explanation, shut it.

I shook my head to get back on track. "She said that the situation was similar to the one with Blackthorne." My eyes shot to Zach, who continued on as though we were discussing the reason behind why a monkey throws his poop around. "That we know the answer, we just don't want to admit it."

"Which is true." All four of us girls swiveled our heads to look at Zach. He was still playing with that stupid ball but it obviously wasn't distracting him at all. "Think about it. We know Credgewall has to be at least somewhat spy-like which rules out the majority of jobs in the world. Then, there's the fact that each spy school specializes itself. Gallagher focused on female spies while Blackthorne focused on male assassins. Credgewall was co-ed which means we can probably rule out both of those options."

"What do you mean?" Liz asked. She had her notebook open and was scribbling down what Zach was saying as fast as her pen would take her.

"Each spy school or 'government training center'—" Zach rolled his eyes at the title most commonly used in D.C. by government agencies. "—is unique. Credgewall wouldn't work on creating female spies and male assassins. No, they'd go for something more general. Something anyone could do with the right training…"

"What other jobs are there besides field agents and assassins in the spy world?" Bex asked.

Liz immediately began listing off a list of all of the various occupations available in the CIA, but Macey was the one thinking along the same lines as me.

"Isn't it obvious?" She said. "Am I the only one who listens in CoveOps?"

"I'm not in CoveOps…" Liz said quietly, a little upset at being cut off by Macey.

Macey rolled her eyes and went on. "For the past month, almost every lecture that Tillie's given is about various scenarios in which we might have to interrogate someone."

Bex and Zach both furrowed their brows as they thought about Tillie's past lesson while Liz just sat on the floor with her eyes darting from person to person. I had already come to the same conclusion as Macey, so I voiced it to the other three who had yet to get there.

"Tillie's an interrogator. That's what they taught at Credgewall. And based on what we read from my dad's journal, the techniques the students learned there weren't very nice."

* * *

**What do you think of Macey and Cammie's deduction? Sorry not a lot of action happened in this chapter. I'm building up to it.**

**Happy almost Turkey Day!**


	20. Chapter 20

**Here you are! And on the first night of my Winter Break! Haha, it's one a.m. in the morning right now and I really should be in bed preparing for writing four school papers in the next week while on the road to visit my relatives but I can sleep when I'm dead, right?**

**Hope you like it! Leave a review. :)  
**

* * *

Chapter 20.

When I was nine, my parents went on a mission in Egypt so Tillie came to babysit me. The first night she was there I threw a fight and refused to go to bed until she told me a bedtime story. She conceded easily enough and then started a tale about a little girl who got lost in the woods.

_"The girl was very scared and the sun was setting. She was worried she wouldn't be able to find her way home." I sat on the edge of my bed, gripping the hem of the comforter._

_ "What happened next?" I asked. Tillie stared at me for a moment and I began to worry she'd forgotten the rest of the story._

_ Then she said, "She started to give up and began to cry. But as she lay on the ground, a rabbit came out of some shrubs near her and came to comfort her. She was so touched by the kindness of the animal, she got up again and walked in the forest some more. Finally, she found her way home."_

_ She looked down at her hands. "Her parents had been very worried. They didn't want her going back to the woods but there was something that drew the little girl back to it. A week later, she got lost in the woods again, but this time she wasn't scared. She knew she'd find her way back. And she did. The end."_

_ "I don't get it," I said. I plopped onto my back and snuggled into bed._

_ Tillie smiled at me and tucked the sheets in around me. "No, I suppose you wouldn't."_

I had brushed that story off when I was younger. But now that I was older and all this mystery surrounded Tillie and who she was, I found myself wondering if that story had a deeper meaning to it.

"What are you going to do?" Liz asked for the hundredth time.

"I don't know, Liz," I responded for the hundredth time.

"Well, you have to do something," she said.

_Do I? _I thought. Sure, maybe Tillie was an interrogator, a dark and twisted interrogator bred and preened from a corrupted school, but did that make her evil? Did that automatically make her a Circle agent? Mr. Solomon trusted her. Mom, despite their differences, seemed to trust her.

I said as much to the others. Zach responded carefully, seeming to weigh each word before he said it. "They could be wrong."

My eyes shifted from each face in the room to the next. All four of them seemed to say the same thing to me. Despite all of her smiles and wonderful stories, there had always been something about Tillie that no one could lay a finger on; the perfect word to describe her had always been on edges of our brains but not seen. Now that we had realized the truth of Tillie's profession, we seemed to be able to grab hold of that word.

_Dangerous._

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. "We've had a long day," I said. "Let' just call it a night."

My friends nodded. Zach gave me a long look before heading out the door and then he was gone. I ran my hand through my hair and darted into the bathroom to prepare for bed.

**21:47 hours: The Operatives (minus Operative Goode) were all situated in bed. **

** 22:13 hours: Operative Morgan could not fall asleep. After testing to see if her fellow operatives were awake she got out of bed. She didn't know what to do after that so she just stood by her bed, looking out her bed at the Gallagher grounds, and thought about Tillie.**

** 22:34 hours: Operative Morgan remembered a note Tillie had passed through Operative McHenry at the beginning of the semester. She dug it out of her drawer and inspected it.**

** 23:09 hours: Operative Morgan found something interesting about the note and departed the room in search of one Matilda Henderson.**

The halls were dark in Gallagher at eleven at night nowadays. Over the past couple of weeks, more and more security measures had been going in to place to insure a "safer learning environment" as Fiona had kindly put it when the announcement was first made about the increased security. That was just her way of saying not to sneak around or we'd regret it.

I snuck past the stairs to the foyer and continued on to the teacher's lodgings. At one point I almost ran into Madame Dabney on her night-patrol through the school, but I managed to hide in a hidden niche in the wall that I'd found freshman year. Soon I was in front of the same door I'd been at just one day before. But this time I wasn't going to leave defeated.

I rapped my knuckles against the old door and waited for the sound of Tillie's footsteps as she walked to the door and unlatched the multiple dead bolts. She swung the door open casually and then stared at me from the other side of the doorjamb. It was obvious that she too hadn't been able to sleep or perhaps hadn't even tried to sleep.

"Can I come in?"

She gave me a long, uneasy look before opening the door wide enough for me to pass through. I entered her room silently, my right hand still clutching the note.

After the door was shut and locked again I turned to her. "What is this note supposed to mean?" I unfurled my fist and showed the note to her.

She glanced at for a second but didn't grab it. "What do you think it means?"

"That's the thing; I have no idea. For a while I thought it might have been a note from my dad. You said something to my mom about him sending you a note and I thought maybe this…" I shook my head. "But it isn't."

"Oh? What makes you think that."

"No. Because it isn't his handwriting. It's similar but not the same. You can see the difference best in the t's."

Tillie didn't look surprised. But then again, I hadn't expected her to be surprised.

"So then I thought to myself, if it wasn't my dad writing the note, who was it? And I started thinking about how you and my dad had some type of note system back in the day, or so I've heard. It was you who sent that note, wasn't it?"

She gave a little shrug. "Guilty as charged."

"Then why give it to me? What's its significance?"

She was silent for a moment, but I was willing to wait for an answer. "I sent that note on a mission seven years ago to your dad. I guess you could say that note was sort of like our version of a code black. That our cover had been blown and we needed to get underground at least temporarily."

I pushed for more. "And?"

"And after I sent that note, I went underground for six months. I didn't contact anyone I had any connection to prior or during the mission. Once the storm had blown over, I came out of hiding and everything went back to normal."

"I don't think I'm following."

"I may have written the note originally, Cammie, but I never got it back from your dad after I sent it to him. And then right before he was declared MIA, I received that in my mail."

I looked down at the note still in my hand. After a moment, I brought my gaze back up to Tillie's face. She was watching me like a person waiting for the toast to pop up from the toaster. You know it's going to come up, but it still makes you jump when it does. "Why should I believe you?"

Tillie bit her lip. "I wouldn't lie to you about something this important. Matthew meant something to me, too."

"What? What did he mean to you?" I exclaimed.

"He—he saved me from myself, Cam. I was heading down a really bad road, really fast and he got me off it. He was the one person in the world I knew I could trust."

I couldn't help the hysterical laugh that escaped me. "But you just let him stay 'underground' for the past five years."

"I know you might not understand everything that I do, but I promise you that I do it with the best intentions." Her words sounded so sincere that I found myself leaning towards believing her. But then I remembered what she was, what she did and I took a step away from her.

"I remember what you said to my mom at the Sunday dinner a while back. You want me to put the clues together and find him." She nodded and smiled a little. "I won't."

She frowned. "Why not? Cammie, if we work together on this we could find him."

"Why, after all these years have gone past, do you want to find him now?" She didn't reply so I continued, "Besides, I'm finding it hard to trust you right now."

Sadness flickered across her face but it was quickly covered up with a mask of calmness. She nodded smoothly. "I understand. I hope your opinion of me changes, Cameron."

I looked away from her, toward the door leading out into the hall. I started heading toward it but she beat me to it. I was just preparing myself for her attack when she started unbolting the locks. She opened the door slowly and motioned the way out for me with her hand.

I exited and she started to close the door. I was several steps away when she said, "I am sorry."

* * *

**Have a great time until my next update! I'll try to get it up soon, but I can't make any promises right now because of school. Oh, and sorry for any grammar/spelling errors. I am putting this up in the middle of the night.  
**

**ReVieW!**

**!HaPPy HoLiDayS!  
**


	21. Chapter 21

**I haven't updated in awhile. I know. BAD ME! Anyways, here's the next chapter which I hope you like.**

**I also know I haven't been listing songs at the beginnings of the chapters lately either. I just don't have any clue which songs would go with what's going on in them. If you have any ideas for songs that you think would fit, please, TELL ME!**

* * *

Chapter 21.

Four days after my late-night confrontation with Tillie, Bex and I were just exiting the library when we heard the loud banging of Gallagher's front door being slammed. The two of us exchanged a quick glance and then rushed around the corner to the large foyer to see what was going on.

When Bex and I reached the foyer, we found it deserted. My eyes darted up to the balcony overlooking the large room and saw the tail of someone's coat disappearing down the upstairs hall leading to my mother's office.

Bex looked at me questioningly but I had no answers for her. I hadn't a clue as to who would be paying my mother a visit at nine o'clock on a Thursday. "Come on," I said. "Let's just get back to our room."

Bex only hesitated for a moment before acquiescing. We ascended the stairs and headed the opposite way my mom's late night visitor had gone.

Bex and I didn't mention what happened in the foyer to Liz or Macey. It didn't seem like worthwhile information to relay. But for the rest of the night, I couldn't shake the feeling that I shouldn't have walked the other way.

-.-.-.-

The next morning, my mother wasn't sitting in her spot in the middle of the head table. I didn't think much of it as she did occasionally miss breakfast for an early meeting here and there, but I did notice when Fiona sidled up to the table and whispered something in Mr. Solomon's ear as he sat eating his syrupy pancakes at the edge of the table. He nodded curtly and continued eating his food.

Fiona hesitated for a moment before backing away and exiting the room. Mr. Solomon stayed where he was. I turned back to my friends and saw that Macey had seen the exchange as well. We caught each other's gaze, both wondering what, if any, was going on.

"Attention, sisters." My mother's voice called from the double doors leading to the rest of the Gallagher mansion. As the chatter died down in the room she continued. "As you are very well aware, for the past year the Sublevels have been closed off. However, as Mr. Solomon's health has been improving he has been helping to return the levels to their regular status. And now, I am pleased to inform you that as of tomorrow, all Covert Operations classes will resume in their intended locations."

Bex and I exchanged a thrilled glance as an excited whisper swept through the room and a large portion of the student body gave a little cheer. Mom gave a small smile and raised her hand to quiet us down again. "Sophomores will report to Sublevel One. Juniors will journey to Level Two, and seniors…welcome to Sublevel Three. Ms. Phillips will be taking over the sophomore class while Mr. Solomon resumes his position with the junior and senior classes."

At this, my eyes snapped to the end of the table where Tillie usually sat. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before. Apparently I wasn't the only confused about Tillie's sudden disappearance. "Wait, what about Ms. Henderson?" Anna said from the end of table.

My mother's answer did little to clear anything up. "She'll no longer be teaching at Gallagher."

I took a look around my group. Bex, Macey, and Zach betrayed no emotion in their expressions but Liz's eyes were wide with confusion. "What does that mean?" She whispered. "Did she quit or what?"

Bex picked an apple from her plate and rolled it in her hands. "No worries, Lizzie. We'll get to the bottom of this." Her eyes met mine and they were set with determination. Bex didn't like being duped by people and I could tell all this drama with Tillie was pissing her off. "If it's the last thing we do."

"Let's not get drastic now. I intend to get a few more good years in before I croak," Zach said. He looked at me and said in a completely serious tone, "At least until Sarah Palin is elected president of this wonderful nation."

Bex rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Go look at Russia with Palin on her porch. We Gallagher Girls—" She motioned the hand still holding the apple between her, Liz, Macey, and me. "—have an actual mission to accomplish."

"Don't be silly. You can't do this without a muscle man," Zach said. "Lucky for you, I brought along Lightning and Thunder." He raised his arms and flexed his biceps. I tilted my head at him and gave him a disparaging look until he lowered them, unashamed.

Bex just pursed her lips and stood up from the table, grabbing her tray. "No need to worry; I got that covered."

Zach looked at me for support but I just shrugged and said, "She has a point there."

"You are no help whatsoever," he said, his voice sounding questionably like a whine. He looked around the table but none of us made eye contact. "None of you."

Bex rolled her eyes. "Oh, Zachary. You know we kid. We're just having a little bit of fun. You do know what fun is, right?"

"Yes, I know what fun is, Rebecca." A flash of irritation swept across his face for a second. Then, he relaxed back into his usual nonchalant attitude. "I just don't relate to your kind of fun."

"I suppose you do need to have a more feminine mentality." She replied, thoughtfully before straightening up like her mind was coming back for a momentary zone-out. "Anyways, let's go. Announcements are over and I'm bored."

I smiled a little but it didn't reach my eyes. I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that something weird was up. Why would Tillie up and quit? Did she quit? Or was there something else entirely going on?

Those questions and more pounded through my head as I headed to my first class of the day. My friends noticed my silence but deigned not to say anything. They were just as worried as I was.

Whatever was going on, I had to figure out what it was. All this being kept in the dark was grating on my nerves and I was sick and tired of feeling helpless. My mom thought I needed protecting but I knew I just needed support. Support to find the Circle and find out why they wanted me.

A thought floated in before I could smash it down. _Tillie wanted to help_.

No, I wouldn't let myself think that. She just wanted to clear her conscience because she blamed herself for what happened to my dad. _What's wrong with wanting to find him?_

Nothing was wrong that. But I couldn't find him Tillie. I couldn't trust her. _Why not? Because she kept secrets? She's a spy, it's what they do._

I wanted to slap my inner-self. She was always saying the exact thing I didn't want to hear. I frowned as I entered the COW classroom and took my seat. Inner-Cammie was really pissing me off.

Maybe I should stop referring to my mind as an actual person. Someone might consider that the first step towards insanity.

Bex had apparently had enough of my quietness. "You okay?"

I nod. She looked like she was going to say more but then Mr. Smith came into the room and started his lesson. She gave me a long look before she shifted in her seat so she was facing the front of the room. I let out a small sigh that went unnoticed by everyone else and turned my attention to the lesson as well.

.-.-.-.-.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I went into the CoveOps room on the ground floor of Gallagher for the last time. Would Tillie be there? Would I finally say something to her? Wish her goodbye or say good riddance? The thoughts I'd had earlier had gotten me thinking that perhaps I'd judged her too soon. Maybe I should work towards making amends.

In the end, none of that mattered because Tillie wasn't in class. It was Mr. Solomon standing by the desk at the front of the room, his right hand gripping the handle of the smooth, black cane. "Hello, class." He gave us an easy smile and was rewarded with a dozen and a half more directed right back at him. "Take your usual seats and then we'll begin."

I sat down at my seat in the third row from the door and two from the front of the room. I kept glancing back at the door to see if Tillie would magically appear, her eyes bright and lively and ready to take on whatever was thrown at her.

The only one to come through the door was Eva Alvarez who shut the door upon Mr. Solomon's instructions.

"Well, class, I know it's been awhile since I was here, teaching you all," Mr. Solomon said, still standing by the desk. "I hope Ms. Henderson taught you well in my stead because there is much left to teach you and very little time to teach it in."

He grabbed a pile of papers from his desk with his free hand and then started walking down the desk aisles, dropping a folder on each desk as he went. I couldn't help but notice how heavily he leaned upon his cane and the way he walked lighter on his right foot than his left. My observations were cut off as he dropped a manila folder on my desk, his eyes staring deep into mine like he knew my deepest secrets. Which he probably did…

He walked on and began talking. "For the rest of the semester, this profile will be your life in this class. When in class and on out-of-class meetings you will embody this person." He set the last folder down on Tina's desk and laid his palm flat on it. "The cover will become your life. If you slip up, you're out of the game."

"Game?" Bex said, only half-interested in what that meant. From the way she was staring at her unopened folder I could tell that she wouldn't notice if Zach started stripping right here and now.

"Yes, Ms. Baxter, game," Mr. Solomon said. "You can think of this as a competition of sorts. Whoever manages to hold onto their cover will be titled CoveOps student of the year. You'll get a plaque in the Hall of History and everything."

My classmates and I all looked around at each other not just in bewilderment because we'd never heard of such a thing before but also to size everyone up. Bex was taking turns staring everyone down and looking at her folder even more intently.

"Throughout the rest of the semester you will be tested on how well you know your cover. What their likes and dislikes are. What they are capable of and what they aren't. You will be sent on missions under your cover and will have to execute the mission in a certain amount of time while _remaining in cover_." Mr. Solomon's gaze was stern as he looked around at us all. "Tonight, I want you to sit and read through your file. Memorize every inch of it. Acquaint yourselves with your covers because come tomorrow in Sublevel Three you're no longer a student attending a spy school…you are your cover. Completely."

The room was silent, even Bex had turned her gaze from her folder and was instead watching Mr. Solomon. Waiting on his every word.

But he was done speaking for today. He dismissed us, and we all packed up our things slowly. As I walked out of the classroom with Bex and Zach none of us said anything. We remained silent as we climbed the steps to the second floor and as we walked to the dormitories and as we entered our room.

It was empty since Macey and Liz were still in their own separate classes so we the three of us just sat down on the floor in the middle of the room and looked at one another. Then Bex said, "I guess we should look at our covers now."

Her eyes slid to the file still grasped in her fingers and I looked at the one I had placed on the floor in front of me. "I guess so," I replied.

My hand moved with an unusual feeling of anxiety to the folder and I was about to lift the cover and reveal the pages beneath when there was a light knock on the door.

"Dammit," Bex muttered. She dropped her file on the ground and stood up quickly, agitation showing on her face. She ran a hand through her loose caramel locks and walked to the door. She twisted the door knob as the knock came again, more insistently this time. She shook her head as she opened the door a little bit and then froze.

The door still blocked my view of my person on the other side of its wooden surface but I saw the way Bex's shoulders tensed up. I started to stand up when Zach's hand shot to my wrist. My eyes moved to his face but he wasn't looking at me. He was staring intently at the door, waiting for someone to speak.

After a few seconds, Bex did. "Can I help you with something?"

The voice that replied was one I knew well. It was strong and yet soft, almost melodic. "I need to speak with Cameron. It's urgent." Tillie said.

Bex shifted her stance and the door opened a little wider. I could just see the edge of Tillie's face. "Anything you have to say to her, you can say to me. I'll relay it to her."

"Rebecca, just let me in."

"No."

I heard Tillie let out a heavy sigh. "I really must speak with her. And quickly. There isn't much time."

At this I pulled my wrist from Zach's grasp and stood up, walking to the door. He was close behind me. "Much time for what?" I asked.

I could see her face now. It was tight and pale, almost like she hadn't slept for days. "There isn't much time to talk to you before I have to leave."

"Well, then say what you have to say and go." Bex's voice was hard and carried the slightest trace of hostility.

Tillie's eyes darted from mine to Bex's to Zach's. The whites of them were bloodshot and the edges of her eyes were rimmed a pinkish color like she'd been crying. I couldn't help but ask, "Is everything alright, Tillie?"

"No," She said, her voice shook. "Nothing is alright."

* * *

**Sorry for any typos in there. Forgive me?**

**Until next time, leave a review! :)**


	22. Chapter 22

**I suck at updating. I know. But the school ends in under two months so hopefully I'll be able to start cranking out the chapters during the summer.**

**Anyways, thanks so much for putting up with my snail pace. I really appreciate it.**

* * *

Chapter 22.

"Tillie, what's going on?"

It was the third time I'd asked the question and each time Tillie just gave me that look that said _you don't really want to know_. But it didn't matter if I wanted to know; I needed to know. "Tillie, talk to me."

She closed her eyes and breathed in a deep, long breath. When her eyes opened back up they seemed darker, almost dangerous. "Jonah Peters."

My mind flashed back to the young woman from the pharmacy the night Zach and I had snuck out. I remembered her cheery attitude and fetish with accents. "What about her?" Zach asked the question before me.

Tillie hesitated for a few seconds, almost as if she knew she was about to say something she really wasn't supposed to. She glanced over her shoulder to where the door was still open a crack. Bex realized what she meant and quickly shut it, twisting the lock into place. Then Tillie looked back at us and said, "Jonah Peters has been taken. By the Circle."

"Why would they want her?" Bex asked.

Tillie gave Bex an irritated look like my friend should already know the answer to that question. "Because she's been stationed her in Roseville for the past seven months. She knows the ins and outs of this mission. Her capture could mean…" Her glance shifted to me and none of us needed to hear the end of the sentence.

It was silent for a moment. And then, "What do we need to do?" Zach questioned.

The sadness on Tillie's face was replaced for a moment with complete bewilderment. "_We_ will do nothing. _I _will get her back."

"And how do you suppose you'll do that, exactly?" He asked, taking a step closer to her. "Are you just going to waltz into the Circle's headquarters and just ask for the CIA agent back?"

"I have my ways."

"And I can assure you that my mother will see right through you," Zach said. "She's good like that. It's what makes her so successful at what she does. She doesn't take any shit from anyone."

The expression on Tillie's face was grim. "Your mother isn't the only one, boy. Besides, you all are much too young to be going on a mission like this. It's for experienced agents."

"How will we ever get the experience to take on higher level jobs when all the 'experienced' agents keep taking all the missions from us?" Bex exclaimed.

Tillie shook her head. "Look, I just came here because…because I'm tired of trying to keep things from you." She looked at me again. "I thought you'd like to know what's going on since it does involve you. I was trying to be considerate."

"If you were truly considering how we were feeling then you'd know that we are as invested in this as you. We need to be involved in the actual mission, not just be kept up-to-date!" I said. "This started with me; I want it to end with me, too."

Bex nodded in agreement but Tillie didn't give in. "That's where you're wrong. It didn't start with you, or even your father. This was started over a hundred years ago when Cavan tried to kill Lincoln."

"And who's the one who stopped him then? Gilly," I replied. "Maybe it's time for Gilly's legacies to take down _his _legacies."

"You're not ready."

"I think I'm plenty ready. I'm a senior, aren't I? A year from now I'll be out there on my own, completing real ops. I might as well get some practice in."

"Cameron, no. Not this time." Tillie's voice was starting to shake again. Except this time it didn't sound sad, it sounded…scared. "You have no idea what they are capable of and if you go in there—you, the prize they've been after for a year and a half—what do you think is going to happen? They aren't after you to invite you to a spa party. They _want _something from you, something I'm not sure you are even aware you have."

The four of us were silent for a moment. "Then what are you going to do?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer I'd receive.

"I'm going to give them exactly what they need: an interrogator."

Zach snorted. "My mother is in no short supply of those."

"Yes, but none that are as good as me. And even if there was an interrogator out there as adept as me—which there's not—the Circle will be very disappointed to see that all their best and brightest have mysteriously…disappeared."

Bex's brow furrowed. "You don't mean you…"

Tillie rolled her eyes. "No, I did not kill them." She amended herself. "Or at least not all of them. Most of them have been taken into custody and are incarcerated in a CIA cell."

A thought came to me. "That man at the base this summer—"

"Was one of the Circle's go-to guys. _Was_ being the key word." There was a wicked glint in Tillie's eyes for a second. I saw Zach shift and knew I hadn't been the only one to notice it. It was gone quickly though and then she continued speaking. "I really must be going. I still have a lot to do before I leave in the morning. I just wanted to…to let you know what was happening and why security might be increased in the next few days. You deserve that much."

"The knowledge or the extra security?" Bex asked. "Because if you're referring to the security then I gotta tell you something. We can handle ourselves."

"Well just to be sure." Tillie gave a small smile that almost seemed genuine and turned to leave.

"Will you stop by again before you leave tomorrow?" I asked.

She froze and then turned slowly back around to face me. When she spoke she appeared to be a little flustered. "I-I didn't think you'd want me to. I mean, considering how our last conversation went…well, I wasn't even expecting this one to go nearly as well as it has."

"I'd like you to come by."

This time when Tillie smiled I knew it was for real. The corners of her eyes crinkled and her cheeks got all rounded and rose-colored. And then it faltered. "Oh, honey, I would love to but I can't. I'm leaving very early and there are people coming to meet me here that don't appreciate tardiness."

My shoulders slumped. "Okay, I understand. Good luck."

"Thank you."

Without anything more said between the four of us, Tillie left. But I was still far from done with the mission at hand.

I turned to Bex and Zach. "We need to find Macey and Liz. Pronto."

Bex nodded, possibly thinking what I was. Zach, however, hesitated. "Why?"

I took a deep breath to center myself. "Because I'm not going to let Tillie get away so easily. Because I'm sick and tired of everyone trying to shove me into a corner while they tell me it's for my safety!" My voice was rising to a yell but I couldn't help it. "I'm not a child anymore, and I won't stand for being treated like one."

.-.-.-.

I sat on the floor Indian style across from four of the people I held dearest to my heart. The room had been silent ever since I told them what I wanted to do several minutes ago. Eventually, I couldn't take the suspense anymore.

"Well, what do you think?"

Bex set her jaw determinedly. "I'm in." I suppressed a gleeful smile and looked at the others.

Macey was looking intently at Bex, like she was measuring what our British friend had just said. Zach was staring out the window but I hadn't a clue as to what he was seeing. It certainly wasn't the view; while the Gallagher landscape was beautiful, there was no way it was that interesting. Liz, however, looked straight at me with the most conflicted expression I had ever seen on her face before.

"What is it, Liz?" I asked. I reached out my hand to grasp hers.

"Cam, you know I love you and I'll always support you no matter what," she said, still looking at me with the same expression. "But I'm not sure you've thought this through entirely. I mean, what you're saying is drastic and we have neither the resources nor the time to do it."

In my peripheral I saw Bex's mouth twist as she took in what Liz had said. I kept my eyes stationed on Liz, though. "We can do it. I know we can."

Liz shrugged dejectedly. "It's not about whether we can do it or not. I know we can. But we need _time _to do it. Firewalls like the ones that Fiona has set up don't come down with just a few keystrokes. And then there's the matter of figuring out where Tillie's even going and how we're going to get there when we do find that out."

"Aren't you still doing those test drives with that van?" Bex mused. "We've snuck out using that before."

"And, Liz, you're a genius with computers. I've seen you take down firewalls in just a few minutes when they took me hours."

Liz's brows furrowed and she looked close to freaking out. "But, Cammie, I've looked at Fiona's firewalls before. They're way more complicated than any simulation in class or even what Gallagher has previously. If I have a talent for breaking firewalls down, then Fiona has a knack for putting them back up twice as strong as before."

I sighed and leaned back, placing my hands on the floor behind me. "So that's it? We're just going to give up and play the part of helpless schoolchildren."

Zach snorted. "No. We just need to think of something _rational_." He turned away from the window and looked at me with the hint of a smirk.

"I am being perfectly rational."

He shook his head. "No, you're not. You're frustrated and angry, and you're letting that cloud your judgment. Liz is right, Gallagher Girl. There's no way we can pull off what you're thinking. Not in one night."

"And you have a better plan, Zach? So maybe what I'm proposing is a little unrealistic but at least I'm trying! I have to know where Tillie's going. I need to be there."

It was silent for a few moments more as Zach turned back to look at the window, Liz turned her sad face to her shoes, and Macey and Bex laid sprawled out on the floor.

And then, a voice came from behind me. A voice I was familiar with but completely unprepared to hear.

"I'll help you."

* * *

_**GASP! **_**Who was that?**

**I really think things are about to pick up. :)**


	23. Chapter 23

**RE-UPLOADING THIS CHAPTER WITH THE CORRECT BREAKS. HOPEFULLY, IT FLOWS BETTER. :)  
**

**Hi. It's been a while. I almost feel like I should reintroduce myself. But I won't because that would be weird.**

**Anyways, here is chapter 23. I hope you like it. :)**

**Please forgive any grammatical, punctuation, or spelling errors. I'm human and, therefore, still a work in progress.**

* * *

Chapter 23

_Dear Mom,_

_I'm leaving. At least for a little while. Please don't be angry or look for me. I need to do this. And don't fret about me being on my own. I've got friends watching my back._

_I'm not going to tell you where I'm headed or who I'm traveling with because I know you'll use that information to find me. I just hope that you'll be able to accept that I have to do this. I can't live my life waiting for others to take care of my problems for me or get the answers to my questions without my help._

_I love you always. Cammie_

_~.~  
_

Spies are taught how to bury their emotions during missions. They are trained to keep their private lives private and their professional lives professional. Unfortunately for me, those two separate parts of my life had merged and taken a gigantic shit over everything that I once had control of.

I was in the back of a little, red Toyota cruising toward Roseville. After we had successfully gotten through the gate, Bex and I had shed our trusty camouflaging blankets. Liz, Macey, and Zach were all stuffed into the trunk counting down the minutes until we reached town and ditched the compact car for something with a little more leg room.

The car hit a bump in the road just then and there was a noticeable thump in the trunk. "Ooft! Watch it, you oaf." Macey's muffled voice cried out.

"Maybe if you weren't taking up half the space back here…" Zach trailed off.

"Are you calling me fat?" Macey screeched. "You little shitface. I am going to asphyxiate you."

"Now, now," Liz's quiet voice could barely be heard through all of the padding between the two of us. "Let's all calm down. Save the asphyxiating for the Circle."

"Whatever," Macey said. Then she raised her voice to be heard clearer through the seats, not realizing that her voice was already loud enough. "Hey, are we almost there yet?"

"Almost."

Out of my window, I saw the first few buildings of Roseville pass us by. This late at night, the streets of the small town were deserted; the town's inhabitants were safely asleep in their beds. "You have another car stashed here somewhere?"

In front of me, the driver replied, "Yes. We're almost there."

"I'm still not completely sure why you're helping us."

"What makes you think I'm doing this for you?" The light ahead turned red but our car didn't slow down. "Ever consider that I hate missing out on a good mission as much as you do?"

"My mother isn't going to be very happy with you."

"I wouldn't worry too much about that. Your mother is rarely ever happy with me."

There was a moment of silence. And then, "Thank you, Fiona."

Ahead of me, she sighed. "Like I said, I'm not doing this for you."

_Sure you aren't._

_~.~  
_

"So do you have any idea where we're headed?" Zach asked. Now freed from the trunk of the Toyota, he was seated in the passenger seat of Fiona's old Chevrolet Suburban.

"No, I thought we'd just start driving around the country and see if we find a trail." Fiona said, rolling her eyes. "Of course I have an idea where we're going. I helped Tillie plan her trip."

"Why didn't you go with her?" Liz asked. It was a valid question. I'd always thought that Tillie and Fiona were partners and friends, almost like I was with Bex, Liz, and Macey.

"It's a well known fact that I'm completely against the Circle of Cavan and everything it stands for." Her eyes glanced at me through the rearview mirror. "Back when I was a newbie and struggling to…_find my path,_ I guess you'd say, I ran into a couple of Circle agents who tried to recruit me. It didn't end well for them."

"Why not?"

For a while, it didn't seem like Fiona would respond. And then when she did, I found myself wishing she had said nothing at all because her response answered nothing. "We all have our histories."

~.~

We drove for two straight days only stopping for gas and snacks.

"So where exactly are the Circle headquarters at?" Macey asked when it was her turn at the wheel. At that time, we were driving through Kentucky. Fiona was slumped against the passenger door trying to get some sleep.

"If we knew where the headquarters were do you really think they'd still be around?" She snapped with her eyes still closed.

"Then where are we headed?"

"We're following Tillie's trail. She was given a set of coordinates which she then relayed to before going off grid. From that spot, we should be able to pick up a trail and follow her." Fiona readjusted herself, her head falling against the seat. "Now, shut up. I'm sleeping."

"But—"

"Zip it, McHenry."

~.~

I was in the driver's seat when we reached the place where Tillie's coordinates had led us. Fiona had dug out a handheld GPS from her bag that was far more advanced than anything you'd find in RadioShack and stationed her eyes on it for half an hour before whipping her hand out and demanding me to halt the car.

"We're here."

Macey wrinkled her nose as she opened the back door and got out of the car. "Where's 'here', exactly?"

"New Effington, South Dakota."

"This place is effing depressing."

I had to agree with Macey. The car was parked on the shoulder of the road leading to the tiny town. Aside from a couple of buildings a little ways down the road, miles and miles of farmland stretched out around us.

Zach crept up behind me. "It's a sad day when scarecrows outnumber the people." I rolled my eyes but the corners of my mouth twitched.

Fiona wasn't paying any attention. She was tinkering away on her GPS, Liz right by her elbow. The two of them were debated for a few seconds and then Fiona nodded and said, "Come on, ya'll. It's time to do some espionage."

~.~

There was something odd about New Effington, South Dakota. It wasn't that it was surrounded by miles of corn or because, as Zach had pointed out, there were so many scarecrows. It wasn't that there wasn't anyone bustling around in the streets (though there wasn't) or because there weren't any designer stores (something Macey was very quick to point out).

We all knew what _didn't_ make New Effington odd; the problem was that none of us could define what _did_ make it, I daresay, creepy. It was like stepping into an Old Wild West movie. I just kept expecting a man with no name wearing a poncho to come striding out of some swinging doors, squinting at the sun and puffing on a cig.

And then a man did exit one of the shops along the single street in the town but he was dressed in your everyday pair of jeans and plaid flannel.

He was making a beeline for a store called Volcanic Farce—a name that irked me some—and was halfway across the road when his eyes landed on us. He stopped in place, presumably surprised, before a large grin appeared on his face. Fiona handed Liz the GPS who then stowed it into her bag quickly.

"Well, hello there!" He called, waving a beefy hand at the six of us and walking our way. "You passing through town?"

"Sure thing." Fiona said. She gave the man a small smile and extended her hand to him. "The name's Rita Donohue. And you are?"

"You all can call me Mitch. So what brings you through the lovely town of New Effington?"

Macey gave a small snort which quickly turned into a gasp as I stepped on her foot to get her to behave.

"You're an awfully big group. Where're you guys headed?"

Fiona's answer was swift and light. If I hadn't known better, I would have believed her myself. "Mount Rushmore for a club field trip."

"Do you have time for some burgers? I was just heading to the diner myself and you all sure look like you could use some tasty food."

I saw Fiona hesitate for a second. The muscles in her back tightened minutely and her hands curled slightly into fists. But still she said, "That sounds lovely."

~.~

"Mitch! Who do we have here?" A tall, slim man with a balding head and a stained apron tied around his neck and waist called out as we entered the Volcanic Farce diner.

"Some travelers on their way through to Mount Rushmore." Mitch replied. "Ran into them just outside. They're awfully nice, don't ya think, Hal?"

Hal wiped his hands on his apron and fastened his eyes on us. When his gaze lingered on me, I felt Zach edge closer but already Hal was turning back towards Mitch and saying, "Your usual?"

Mitch sat down at the small counter by Hal. "Eh, why don't you some cayenne peppers to it?" A significant look passed between the two of them but Fiona didn't see it as she was inspecting the rest of the room.

"Sure, sure," Hal said, nodding his head a little. He looked back at our group. "What about all of you?"

Fiona answered before the rest of us could. "A burger each, please."

As Hal disappeared into the kitchen to cook the food, six of us sat down at the nearest booth. There wasn't enough room so Liz and Zach pulled chairs from nearby tables to the end of the table.

As the others whispered in hushed tones about the coordinates, I stared at the tabletop. The odd feeling I had gotten as we walked in the street had grown when we entered the diner. Something wasn't right.

In fact, something was very wrong about New Effington, South Dakota.

_Volcanic Farce_. What an odd name for a diner.

My eyes drifted to Mitch sitting at the counter. His body overflowed the tiny stool he was perched on. His head was tilted slightly as he stared silently out of the diner windows.

_Volcanic Farce._

"Liz, do you have a pen?" I asked. She stared at me quizzically but dug in her bag and grabbed out a ballpoint pen. "Thanks."

Using a napkin, I wrote out the name of diner. Then, I stared at it for another moment.

"What is it?" Zach asked, moving his head closer to mine so only I could hear his voice.

"The name of the diner. Don't you think it's a little…odd?"

He shrugged but looked down at the napkin with the diner's name on it. He twisted it towards him and took the pen from me. I watched as he listed out various anagrams of the two words until he paused in his writing. "What? What is it?" I asked so quietly I wasn't sure he heard me.  
"Cam…" His eyes met mine and then darted to Fiona. "We have to get out of here."

Beside me, she sat tall and grimly said, "I think it's too late for that."

"Why?" Bex asked. "What's wrong?"

"_Volcanic Farce_." Zach muttered crumpling up the napkin. He scowled and ran a hand through his hair.

"Zach." I grabbed the hand of his that still clutched the ruined napkin. He looked at me and laid his other hand on top of mine. I swallowed and continued. "What does it say?"

He sighed. He pulled his right hand out from underneath me and held out the napkin to me. "Take it."

I took it and flattened it out against the table. My eyes widened as I read what Zach and Fiona had already realized. Just then, Hal came out of the oven and said, "Here ya go, Mitch. The usual."

Mitch chuckled. "And the cayenne? Where's that?"

"On the way."

"Cammie?" Liz whispered tentatively. "What's going on?"

I couldn't answer her though. My mind was exploding, connecting the dots of every little thing that had irked me about New Effington. Suddenly, the town and the coordinates made sense. Suddenly, I couldn't believe that I'd been so stupid, that we'd all been so stupid. Suddenly, I realized that New Effington wasn't a rendezvous point for contracted workers to meet with Cavan agents.

Right there on that napkin below the words _Volcanic Farce_ was the anagram _Circle of Cavan._

I turned my head to look at Fiona's stony face and Bex took the napkin from my limp hands. I heard her, Macey, and Liz gasp in unison as they read it and realized what it meant.

"Fiona…"

"They're _coming._"

* * *

**GASP!**

**You know, I feel really bad because a _really_ long time ago I promised to bring in some more romance between Cammie and Zach. But with the way the story went, I never got around to it. And now I feel guilty.**

**I'll see what I can do.**

**Questions, thoughts, and feelings welcome! Just leave a review!**


	24. Chapter 24

**And the songs return! It's been a while since there was a song that I felt could sort of-kind of fit with a chapter but as I've been trying to decide how this will all play out, I seem to be finding songs that I actually think work _fairly _well.**

**Forgive any typos and I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

Chapter 24. _Blackout_ (by Breathe Carolina)

WHAT TO DO AFTER YOU FALL INTO AN ENEMY TRAP:

1. Don't freak out.

2. Keep your friends from freaking out.

3. Don't eat anything the enemy gives you (even if the burger looks really good).

4. Get rid of all the gadgets in Liz's purse because it wouldn't bode well for the Circle to get them.

5. No matter what Do. Not. Freak. Out.

-.-.-.-

I was having trouble not freaking out. So was Liz.

"Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my _gawd_." She breathed, scared to talk any louder in case they were recording our conversation. "What are we gonna do, Cammie? Fiona?"

Bex squeezed her hand tightly. "It'll be okay. We'll fight our way out, tooth and nail."

Liz didn't seem very encouraged by this.

Fiona shook her head. "I'm not sure that's wise. Even if we could fight our way out of the diner, it's still a long, _open_ stretch to the car. They'd be right back on us before we got away. Chances are, they've already found the car; we have to assume it's useless."

"So what are going to do, let ourselves get captured?" Bex said in a way that clearly expressed her displeasure in the idea. I wasn't so keen on it either. And then Fiona nodded.

"_What?_" Macey said far too loudly. At the counter turned his head to glance at us. Quickly, all six of us pretended to laugh at some knock, knock joke. He turned back around and Macey continued in lower tones, "You can't be serious. I'm not letting myself get kidnapped."

"You got a better plan?"

Macey was silent.

"How is letting them take us any better than making a run for it?" I asked, pushing the rising terror in me aside.

"If all went as it should, Tillie should be here. She'll know what to do. Just…don't expect her to be lovey dovey on you alright? She can't blow her cover."

We all nodded.

"Besides," Fiona said. She tried to smile at me but it fell sort of weird so she gave up. "This way, you might actually get some answers. Answers you wouldn't get if you ran away when the going got tough."

She was right. Sometimes you have to go right up next to the sleeping dragon to get its treasure.

"People are coming," Zach said looking out the window. "They're crossing the street right now."

Fiona nodded. "Listen, put up a fight. But don't do anything to get yourselves killed. This is one of those times when you need to go with a whimper and leave the bang to someone else."

Bex met my gaze. Not fighting back at our best didn't sit well with either of us.

The door opened and more people entered. Mitch turned on his seat to welcome them and Hal left his kitchen.

"It's about time! What took ya so long?"

"Shut it, fatty. We had recon to do." He jerked his head in our direction. "Make sure they weren't followed.

Liz gasped and pulled out the GPS from her bag. She typed something in it and then gave me a mischievous smile. As quickly as it came it was gone and she stuffed the GPS back in her bag after making sure its screen looked like your average GPS device.

Mitch was still talking to one of the guys who had just entered but others were walking toward us.

"Well, what do we have here? Shouldn't you be in school, kiddies?" One of the grim men said. His face was pockmarked and when he sneered the scars looked even more grotesque. His buddies behind him chuckled.

"We just stopped for lunch. In fact, it's probably time to head out." Fiona said. She gestured for us to stand up and leave. Zach and Liz tried to move to let the rest of us out of the booth but the men blocked their path.

"There's no rush." The man who had been talking to Mitch walked over. His eyes landed on me. "Ain't that right, Miss Morgan?"

Zach swore and before I knew it he was landing a punch in the man's face. Suddenly, fist were flying everywhere and hitting anywhere they could reach. A hand wrapped around my bicep and I instinctively rammed my elbow into the guy's sternum. He stumbled back only to be replaced by an even larger adversary. He lunged toward me and I desperately wanted to knee him in his unguarded groin but I had to pay heed to Fiona's words.

His arms wrapped around me, pinning my arms to my sides. I struggled and kicked enough to make it seem like I was trying to escape. Around me my friends were being held in similar fashion. Liz whimpered a bit as the man holding her twisted her arm behind her back so that the slightest movement could dislocate her shoulder. Bex and Macey both sported bloody noses having been pushed into each other but they'd also gotten a couple of good hits at their opponents. Two men were holding onto Zach who had been forced onto his knees.

"Thought you could fight you're way out, huh?" The man who had Fiona by the neck said. Her face was starting to turn purple from not being able to breathe. Her hands grabbed at his futilely. The man chuckled. "Get out the chloroform. We're taking them to base."

A rag covered my mouth and nose, forcing the pungent smell down my throat. I tried to hold my breath but the cloth never left and it wasn't like I could just stop breathing indefinitely. I gasped for air, my mind went woozy, and my head drooped.

As I lost consciousness, I had one last thought…

_God, I hope Fiona knows what we're doing…or we're screwed._

-.-.-.-

I slowly came to. I was lying on a hard, cold surface and the air conditioning in the place made humming noises as it whooshed around the room, sending chills down my back. My head pounded something nasty and the back of my throat felt clogged.

I coughed to try to dispel the disgusting feeling and opened my eyes. The lighting in the room was harsh and hurt my retinas. The walls and floor which were all white tile only made the light brighter. I felt like I was staring into the center of the sun but not receiving any of hits warmth.

Pushing the hair out of my eyes, I noticed that my wrists were bound in handcuffs as were my ankles. The chains were thick and heavy and as I was still a little weak from the chloroform, my arms ached under the strain of just lifting my hands to my face.

It was at this time I noticed that I was alone. There wasn't even a guard in here; in fact, I was the only thing in the room.

I couldn't stay here as weak and unarmed as I was. I began crawling across the room to the door at the opposite end when it swung open. Three people walked in.

Two men toting AK-47s stood on either side of a woman; I didn't recognize them. But the woman I did. I'd met her once before in the tombs at Blackthorne.

It was Zach's mom.

"Grab her and take her to room four," she said. "It's time her and I had a nice, little chat. Girl to girl."

Her eyes gleamed wickedly as the men grabbed my upper arms. I tried to shrug them off but their grips were too tight. Their hands could easily wrap around my biceps and pull me to my feet.

They dragged me out the door and to the right. My cell was at the end of a long narrow hall and as we trudged down it I struggled to peek into the little windows in the doors. Were my friends behind these doors?

I hated to think what might have happened to them if they weren't.

Mrs. Goode saw me trying to look in the windows and smacked me in the back of the head, forcing me to look at the ground.

"Uh-uh-uh, Miss Morgan, no peeking for you."

We made several turns and went down a flight of stairs and I was just beginning to wonder how big this place freaking was and how the Circle managed to keep it hidden when we stopped in front of a wide, metal door. There were no windows in this one and when Mrs. Goode opened it she had to put in a long code and use the full strength of her body to pull it sideways. It was a good six inches thick.

"Set her in the chair and leave." Mrs. Goode commanded the guards. They nodded and quickly did as they were told, shutting the door behind them with a resounding _bang_.

And then I was alone with the evil woman in a room that while larger than my previous quarters was a hell of a lot more suffocating. The walls were a morbid gray, the air smelled slightly dank, and the lighting in here was greenish and flickered randomly.

At least I wasn't blinded anymore. Then again, I would have taken being blind over a chat with Zach's mom.

I still couldn't believe he came out of that woman's womb.

"So," she said, sounding amused. "You led your little gang to New Effington, South Dakota. Led them right into the hands of the Circle." She chuckled. "I have to say, I thought you were smarter than that. I mean, I knew you weren't the shiniest tool in the box but I guess I just…expected more from you, the daughter of Matthew Morgan."

She laughed. The sound echoed harshly off the walls, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. Her laughter died down and she took a seat across the table from me.

"Now, Cammie—can I call you Cammie?—let's talk you and I. Tell me what I want to know, and I'll see what I can do about the longevity of friends' lives."

I snorted and she raised her eyebrows at me. "Do you doubt me? I give you my word that if you cooperate, I won't harm a hair on your friends' heads."

"But you'll harm the rest of them." I said. I wasn't falling for that one.

"Your classmates will be released alive and well."

"Classmates?"

"Unfortunately, Fiona Phillips's fate isn't yours to decide." Mrs. Goode sighed. "It's a shame she's so dedicated to the Agency. She's a talented agent; could've had a future here if she wasn't so damn prissy."

Uh-oh. But at least she was still talking in the present tense. That must mean Fiona was still breathing…right?

"What do you even want with me?" I asked. It was a question that had been plaguing me ever since we found out the Circle was after me. Now that I was their captive I might as well know _why_ I was their captive.

Mrs. Goode smiled like she was pleased I had asked this. "Your father was a very intrusive man, did you know that, Cammie? He just didn't know when to stop digging into the business of others."

"So?"

"So, he had to be dealt with. Problem was, we couldn't be sure he didn't leave measures to let someone carry on in his place if something were to happen to him. Don't you see, Cammie? You were his contingency plan."

This was unbelievable. "Are you serious?" She nodded her head solemnly and now I couldn't help but laugh. "You're freaking crazy!"

Mrs. Goode wasn't very happy with that. She leaned across the table and slapped me hard across the mouth. "You watch your language, Morgan. Does Gallagher not teach manners anymore?"

My cheek stung from the slap but I wouldn't give her any satisfaction by nursing it. Instead I stared her straight on; glaring at her while she glared back.

She took a deep breath. "How about we start over, okay, Cameron? How does that sound?"

I didn't respond.

"We don't have to be friends, you know. In fact, I think we could get along quite well if you weren't so damn stubborn. I mean, we already share a common interest."

"And what's that?"

She reached under the table and revealed a manila folder. She opened it and showed me a picture of Zach. "You care about him, don't you? I love my son and would hate to see him get hurt, but one must make sacrifices in this world. If you force my hand…"

She ripped the picture in half right down the middle of Zach's face. I turned my face away, refusing to let her see how fearful I was of her.

"Now, let's chat." I pursed my lips. "Cameron."

Her voice was admonishing and part of me wanted to give and tell her anything she wanted to know for Zach and my friends. But another part, the stronger part, knew that they would never forgive me if I gave in to her.

Real spies will die before they betray their own.

"Fine," Mrs. Goode said. She was getting annoyed. I was reacting how she wanted me to. There were no tears, no begging. "I hoped to do this as a last resort but so be it. You disappoint me, Cameron. I thought you had more sense than this."

I turned my head back to look at her as she went to the door. Opening it, she beckoned to a guard down the hall and whispered something in his ear. He nodded and left. Mrs. Goode turned back to me.

"Did you know that the Circle just acquired a new agent? Probably not. Mommy wouldn't want you to worry." She said, pouting her lips and speaking to me like I was a toddler. "In any case, _I _don't care about frightening you."

I narrowed my eyes but remained silent.

"Have you ever heard of Credgewall, Cammie? A real vile school, it's a shame it was shut down. Some of the Circle's best agents came from there. And so do this new member of my team.

"The teachers at Credgewall really knew what they were doing. They knew that when you get to the core of espionage it isn't about honor or doing _'the right thing'_. It's about glory and money. So they devoted themselves to maybe not producing the nicest of spies but certainly the best. Their specialty was interrogators.

"There were many students that passed through Credgewall's historical, secretive walls. But only one could ever be the _best_ student. And now, I have her. The star of her exemplary year."

Slowly, the door behind Mrs. Goode began to open again. She leaned toward me with a sinister gleam in her eye. "I will get my answers out of you one way or another."

I heard footsteps and tore my gaze from the evil woman to over her shoulder where someone stood just inside the room as the door closed. It was a woman of average height and looks. She carried a briefcase and oversized toolbox in either hand.

Fiona's words went through my head: D_on't expect her to be lovey dovey on you...She can't blow her cover._

At this moment, I wished I had stayed at Gallagher. My sisters were probably in CoveOps right now with Mr. Solomon, embracing the lives of their covers and trying to win CoveOps Student of the Year. Instead, I was here in the Circle headquarters, surrounded by enemies and with little hope of escaping.

I'd never felt smaller.

Mrs. Goode turned around to face the newcomer. "Oh, Henderson, you are prompt. And how are our other guests faring?"

Spies are supposed to become their covers. Just how far was Tillie willing to go to not blow hers?

* * *

**Please don't hate me!**

**I don't know when the next chapter will be up but I have a pretty good idea of what will happen...**

**Until then, leave a review. :)**


	25. Chapter 25

**Gah! Long time since an update, I know. But this is also my second longest chapter to date (it's shorter than Chapter 14 by just a handful of words). And I have big news. I think this story is almost done. AS IN, ONLY ONE OR TWO MORE CHAPTERS TOPS! Sort of freaking me out to say the least.**

**Also, I found the song for this chapter today and it just blew me away with how well I think it fits the characters' emotions in the chapters.**

**Anyways, hope you like the chapter! As usual, forgive any of my spelling or punctuation mistakes. :)**

* * *

Chapter 25. _This Woman's Work_ – Greg Laswell

Time seemed to stop as my mind sped up, a thousand scenarios running through it all at once. They flashed by at lightning speed: Tillie roundhouse kicking Zach's mom in the face; Tillie perfectly timing the buildings generators to crash so her and I could sneak out in the dark; a squadron of the Agency's best bursting through the metal door because Tillie tipped them off. But each scenario was quickly hushed because I already knew which one was going to happen.

It made me nauseous. I didn't even hear Tillie's response to the vile woman's question I was so overcome with fear.

Mrs. Goode must have seen something on my face because she smiled. "You understand now, don't you, Cameron? I don't care about the means; I care about the end result. You'll be a tough cookie to break, but I'll get what I need out of you."

My mouth was dry. I tried to swallow but almost gagged. "I don't even know what you want."

"Well, then I guess you'll just have to tell me everything until you stumble upon the answer. Henderson, you may begin."

"Yes, ma'am."

Tillie set her things on the metal table and the toolbox landed with a large clang that made me jump. She flipped the latch and opened the box, revealing an array of pristine equipment ranging from brass knuckles to knives to—I suppressed a shudder—pliers.

"Miss Morgan, I'm going to start off easy on you, alright?" Tillie said, her voice deceptively soft. "Answer the questions without resistance and there is no need for anyone to shed any blood. Okay?"

I turned resolutely to fix my gaze on the cement wall. In the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs. Goode come to closer.

"Now, Cameron," she said. "How long ago did your father go missing?"

I was about to open my mouth to sneer the answer back at her when Tillie's voice ran through my head. _Don't answer any enemy questions, even the easy ones. ESPECIALLY the even ones._

She'd given us that lecture right before Halloween. I remembered because she'd had a jack-o-lantern on her desk at the time and had used it as the perfect example of an operative being interrogated.

_"See?" She said, looking around the room at us. "Jack is completely shut off to his surroundings. He reveals nothing. Even with a knife sticking out of his rump."_

At the time we had all laughed but now I sort of wished I was that pumpkin. At least it hadn't felt the pain when Tillie had stabbed it. I, however, could feel it as the back of her hand hit my cheek.

"Don't make this hard on yourself, Cameron." She said. She leaned in close to me so her face was all I could see.

I spat in her face and was rewarded with another slap to my face.

It was going to be a long day.

-.-.-.-

The pain was freezing hot. My limbs shook uncontrollably and my teeth chattered. My sense of time had vanished and now I was stuck moving in timeless and uncounted circles. I heard someone asking me another question but I couldn't distinguish the words. Something prodded my arm and suddenly I was on fire, burning to a crisp.

I opened my mouth to scream but I was so out of it, there was no telling if I made any sound. My vision blacked and I welcomed the darkness.

The next thing I remembered was being shocked awake by icy water being poured on me. I gasped and inhaled water. It took me a moment to get over the gagging and then Mrs. Goode was there, demanding answers to questions that I couldn't and wouldn't give her.

"Did your father ever hint at his work when you were a little, Cameron? Did you receive anything from him after he'd gone missing?"

I did my best to ignore her and stared down into my lap. My jeans were dark and damp. I couldn't be sure if they were like that from the water that had just been poured on me or from the various cuts that now spread across my body.

"Cameron," Mrs. Goode's voice was disapproving. "Don't do this to yourself. Now tell me, where is your father's journal?"

A dry laugh echoed around the room and I realized it was mine. Was this what it was like to go insane? Was I losing my grip on reality? My laugh turned into sobs and I hunched over in my seat, my shoulders quaking.

Mrs. Goode made a disgusted noise and said something to Tillie. The next second, my back bent ramrod straight from the force of the shock going through me.

"The pain won't stop until you're ready to answer my questions, Cameron." Mrs. Goode said. She turned to Tillie. "Turn it higher."

Tillie's face was emotionless as she increased the shock gradually. My breathe came short, my heart stuttered, and suddenly I was paralyzed. Tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes. I couldn't take this. I wasn't strong enough.

Would it be so bad to give in if it would alleviate this hell?

I tried to open my mouth to surrender, to let Mrs. Goode know that I was ready to talk but then the pain increased again and now I was writhing in the ropes that kept me bound to the chair. I caught sight of Tillie staring resolutely at the wall too much a coward to watch what she was putting me through.

I yelled, "Enough!" but it just came out as jumbled scream. Mrs. Goode seemed to get the message though and she waved her hand for Tillie to stop. The pain stopped instantly and I breathed in deeply, relieved to know my lungs still worked.

"Ready to talk now, Cammie?" Mrs. Goode said, leaning near me. Her face adopted the expression of a caregiver, her hand coming to cradle my cheek like a loving mother. I wanted to start crying again at the thought of my own mother, alone in her office.

Did she know what had happened? Or would I suddenly just be gone like my dad?

"Tell me, Cammie. Tell me, and your friends walk free."

I met her eyes, trying to decide if I believed her but I wasn't sure it mattered either way.

"My dad…" I started but my throat was too dry. Mrs. Goode stood quickly left my line of vision. She was back a second later, a cup of water in her hands.

"Drink this." She said and I didn't care if it was poisoned, I had to have it. She lifted the cup to my lips and I gulped the cold water down greedily.

"My dad," I said again, my throat working much better now, "Never told me anything."

"You know I don't believe that."

"It's true. He kept his work private."

"So, he never asked you to do anything for him? Hack into anywhere or follow anyone?"

I shifted through my memories of my dad. There were times when he would take me out on the town and we'd tail people, but they were random and I usually picked the targets out. "No. Why would he have me do that when he was far more trained?"

"Think harder, Cammie," she said. "Your father never asked you to do anything for him? Anything at all?"

Something tickled at the edge of my brain and my eyes connected with Tillie's. They were wide and I wondered how I hadn't seen the panic in them before. Her pupils were huge, the whites of her eyes bloodshot. Her skin was stark white like a sheet of paper and she gripped a flashlight with a lethal hold.

Suddenly, the three of us were bathed in red light and a pounding alarm rang in my ears. Mrs. Goode exclaimed something, but her voice was loud in the overwhelming sound of the alarms. She rose from her crouch by my chair into a standing position but almost immediately fell back down, the back of her head having come into connect with the force of a swinging flashlight.

The ropes binding my hands and ankles were cut and then Tillie was pulling me to my feet. She yelled out to me and I focused on the way her lips shaped the words since I was still unable to hear anything other than the alarm. "Are you okay?"

I nodded and went to take a step to the door but my legs gave out. I would have face-planted but Tillie caught my elbow and then looped my arm over shoulder holding my hand with her right and wrapping her left arm around my waist. We stumbled to the door and I leaned against the wall as she worked to crank it open. Once it was ajar, she supported me again and we hurried down the halls as fast as we could.

The alarms were less sharp in the hallway than in the interrogation room so when I yelled, "What about the others?" I knew Tillie would be able to hear it, but she still ignored it.

"Tillie!"

"Not now, Cameron!"

We kept turning down different halls and I began to worry Tillie was lost, but then we turned another corner and there was an exit…

Guarded by half a dozen Circle members.

"Cam, lean on the wall."

The guards saw the two of us just as Tillie pushed me backwards into the wall. She rushed the group, jumping into the air and smashing her foot onto one of the men's knees to keep her leverage. The man crumpled, his leg sticking out in the completely wrong direction while Tillie clipped another man in face with perfectly executed Schabaltzky Figure Eight. One woman grabbed Tillie by the thigh and pulled her down but Tillie was ready with the classic palm-to-nose defense tactic.

Three down, three to go.

A punch hit her back but she recovered quickly, twisting around to block the next hit. She grabbed her attacker's next punched, pulling her into an awkward airborne somersault that ended with the crunching of bone.

The last two guards came for me and were almost on me when two shots rang out and they landed in a heap before, scarlet began to seep onto the tile floor.

And then it was just Tillie, her arm still outstretched, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol clutched in her hand. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth stern, and I got the sudden of me twenty years from now, standing just like that. Was that the life I had chosen? A life where every place I went to fell into despair and where alarms were constantly ringing, lights flashing, and people moaning around me at the injuries I had inflicted on them.

Tillie lowered the gun and I jumped out of my reverie. She rushed over to me and helped me back up. As she did so, the building alarms died down with a long, high-pitched whine. Silence filled our hall but in the distance, I could still hear the echoes of people's shouts as they worked to track down the problem that had sent everything into chaos.

And then I heard the soft scuffling of multiple pairs of feet. A few seconds later, the approaching group turned the last corner and there were my friends.

I was so happy to see them alive that I could have cried.

Tillie jerked her head to the exit door. The others followed us. At the door she typed in a long pass code and with a whirring noise, the door unlocked. She swung the door open and a cold, ranky breeze blew in. We stepped out in a dark, dank passageway and though I couldn't see it, I could hear a constant _drip, drip_ from nearby.

"Hurry," Tillie whispered barely loud enough for me to hear over my breath. "We have very little time."

The group of us ran as fast as we could down what I suspected to be an oversized sewage pipe. Unfortunately, my weakened state and what appeared to be a sprained ankle on Fiona's part slowed us down to a steady trot rather than a full out sprint. Still, it was only a few minutes until the pipe ended at a grate with a lock, which took Bex a grand total of fifteen seconds to break and then we were out in the open night.

I expected us to keep running on but Tillie hesitated. We all ground to a stop to look at her.

"Tillie."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out an old, unopened envelope. "Take this, Cam."

I took it gently and held it with both my hands in front of me. "What is it?"

"The last note." She took a deep breath and glanced up at the moonless sky. "It's the only one I never read."

"Why not?"

"Because it's for you."

Realization dawned on me. Mrs. Goode's insistence that my dad had left me a task, a mission hadn't been complete bullcocky. He had left me something; I just hadn't known. But why hadn't Tillie just read the note and completed it herself?

She seemed to know my question before I asked it. "This—the Circle isn't for me or your parents' generation to take out. Now, I've never been one to buy into all that destiny shit but I do know that the future is what you make it. You guys are the future and I have to believe that I've taught you well enough. Maybe—hopefully, you'll do better for the ones you love than I have."

"Why does this sound like goodbye?"

I felt someone come up beside me and then Zach was sliding his hand into mine. "Because it is." He said.

Tillie bit her lip. "I've got a mission for you, Camster. Take the Circle down. Not for your dad or yourself or anyone else. Do it because it's the right thing to do not because you've been wronged. Bitterness is a hard emotion to live with; I should know."

All I could do was nod.

"And, most of all, don't do it on your own. You've got some great friends here who can make a difference." Now, she turned to Fiona. "Watch out for her. I'll delay the Circle for as long as I can but they won't spend long licking their wounds."

"Of course." Fiona said. Her voice was shaky.

Bex's, on the other hand, was strong and confident. "When they come for us, we'll be ready."

Something close to a smile appeared on Tillie's face for a moment. "I knew I liked you for a reason, Baxter." And then all humor was gone from her. "Four miles southeast there is a black Jeep hidden in a corn field. Keys are on the axel of the driver's side back wheel. Drive it straight back to Gallagher. A team will be waiting there to debrief you."

"Any messages you want us to relay for you?" Zach asked.

"No, I think I'm done with messages. They only seem to keep me stuck in the same place and I don't want that to happen to anyone else."

There was silence for a couple seconds and then Fiona was hugging Tillie. It was the first display of affection I'd ever seen between the two (or Fiona, period) and I realized then that maybe I'd overlooked their friendship too quickly.

The two separated and Tillie came over to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. I didn't think she was going to say anything but then she whispered, "You are so much like your dad."

And then she was gone, running back the way we had come into the passageway, towards the underground compound, towards what she must have known were her last moments.

We didn't wait to watch her disappear. The rest of us turned and headed southeast, the way she had directed us. Three-quarters of the way there, the night sky suddenly lit up behind us and flame soared up into the sky. We didn't pause to take in the site or reflect on how much of chink we thought this made in the Circle's armor. We carried on and when we got to the Jeep in the field and swerved onto the quiet road, we kept our faces stoic as fire trucks raced by us, going the opposite way as us.

In the Jeep, it was quiet enough that I could pretend I was alone and it was then that I let myself think and reflect on the past few months. From Tillie showing back up in my life when I least expected it to her leaving for the last time when I needed her most.

I felt terrible. I had taken all this time with her for granted and wasted too much time being at mad at her for a past she couldn't change, not realizing that the future was closing in on us day by day. She was gone now, and with her went one of the last connections I had to my dad and the truth.

We had been driving for several hours when I spoke the first words since Tillie had left. "I used to think she knew how to keep people on her side. But it was the complete opposite, wasn't it?"

"What do you mean?" Liz asked, lifting her head from the window she had been resting against.

"She knew how to make others think she was on their side." I said matter-of-factly.

"Maybe with some people. But, Cammie, Tillie was always looking out for you. She was always on your side."

"Well, it doesn't feel like it. If she was on my side, she'd be here. _By_ my side."

Bex was beside me and she wrapped her arm around me, going carefully since I was still sore from my many cuts and bruises. I hadn't forgotten what Tillie had done to me in that dreadful room, either. "She wouldn't have done this either."

Fiona humphed. "Trust me, you got off easy. If Tillie hadn't been there, you'd be one limb shorter by now. She might have had a convoluted way of showing her loyalty, but you were the most important thing to her, Cameron. Don't let her have died in vain."

"No one made her walk into that building!"

"That depends on who you ask."

With that, conversation ended in the car for the rest of the ride. Hours later, when we pulled up to the gates of Gallagher and road up the drive in the shining light of the sun, that silence remained.

We were changed. Our futures were as well.

Tillie had said she was done leaving messages but I think she left her greatest one of all on her last night.

We were the future.

All we had to do was make it.

* * *

**Were you shocked? I've actually been planning it that for, oh, the past dozen or so chapters (so, like, over a year...).**

**Leave a review and I'll forever harbor good feelings for you. :)**


	26. Chapter 26

**HAPPY NEW YEAR!  
**

**Big news. This is the last chapter. I do plan to write my own GG6 but that probably won't be for a few months. Hope you enjoy this last chapter of Here Comes the Spy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Gallagher Girls. I just wish I were one.**

**Please excuse any errors on my part!  
**

* * *

Chapter 26 _Living on a Prayer _- Bon Jovi

"Matilda was the epitome of what it means to be a Gallagher Girl. She knew her duty to her country and was willing to put all she had on the line for the people she loved. She may not be here anymore but she will never be forgotten. And as long as we remember who she was and what she did, she will never truly be gone."

For once, the Dining Hall was silent. No one stirred or had their minds on the quiz they had next hour. We all just sat, staring at my mother as she gave her commemorative speech to Tillie. As sunlight poured in from the bay windows all along the walls, there seemed to be a storm cloud looming over all of us.

The Circle base in South Dakota had been blown up, but how many others were there? When we'd returned back to Gallagher after escaping, there had been a squadron of CIA agents waiting for us. They had debriefed us all one by one, taking the most time with Zach. He insisted he had had no idea that we had walked into a trap and hotspot of Circle activity but they remained suspicious.

When we'd inquired about whether Jonah Peters had made it out, they hadn't replied and we assumed the worst.

But then, last night she came knocking at Gallagher's front doors. Her leg was broken and she still had bruises all over her body from the ordeal she had gone through, but she was alive. And she had come to pay her last respects to Tillie.

She wasn't the only one. Dozens of agents from all over the world had been arriving for the past fourteen days. I'd wondered aloud to Mom whether this might draw suspicion but she had waved it off, saying, "She deserved this. And with all these visiting trained operatives walking the halls, the Circle would be doltish."

And so it was that agents from the CIA, NSA, FBI, Interpol, and MI6 (who had the clearance) had taken up temporary residence at Gallagher. For two weeks we waited as teams dug through the wreckage of the Circle base until they found her while there had been no trace of Zach's mom.

Now, we were in the Dining Hall three days after Mom got the call confirming Tillie's KIA status. It was a sea of black, there wasn't a single Gallagher Academy uniform in site. The long tables that usually decorated the halls were gone and smooth black wood chairs were lined in rows facing the podium. Bex sat resolutely next to me, eyes fastened on my mother. Liz and Macey sat on her other side, respectively, the former's eyes glistening with unshed tears. Zach was on my other side, his hand resting gently in mine. Every once in a while he would squeeze my fingers, as if making sure I was still there.

Because nothing was definite anymore. One action could change our futures. A shift in the wind could end our lives.

My mom kept talking about all of Tillie's strengths but I couldn't keep my attention on her speech. It was only a string of words after all and words can't bring someone back from the dead.

That train of thought led me back to the fact that I had been avoiding since getting back from New Effington. The letter. It still sat, unopened, on my dresser where I had tossed it when I first entered my room after everything. I couldn't bring myself to open it and read what was inside because of the feeling that when I did, my life would be flipped upside down for the hundredth time this year. I think my friends understood that because they never mentioned the white envelope, the giant elephant in the room.

I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to open the letter. Tillie wanted me to and it would be wrong of me to ignore one of her last wishes.

My mom's voice stopped and I realized the memorial was done. Over. Everyone in the room was standing up, quietly beginning conversations with old friends they hadn't seen in several missions. They were all completely blasé about the fact that Matilda Henderson was dead; she had given herself up as the ultimate sacrifice to save their asses and they just moved on.

Anger swelled in my chest. None of this was right. Tillie shouldn't be gone. I shouldn't be a target of the Circle's. My friends should be safe. People should be more damn respectful.

Zach seemed to sense the change in my demeanor because his hand left mine and his arm came around my tensed shoulders. I relaxed against him and felt my anger dissipate as quickly as it had arisen. My emotions had been so touch-and-go lately; I just wanted to get back to me but I wasn't sure who that was anymore.

"You are who you've always been." Zach said, holding me tighter against him.

_ Oh shit, did I say that last part out loud?_

I looked up at him, tilting my head at a slightly odd angle to take him in fully. He looked so much more mature than the boy I had met back in the spring of my sophomore year. I'm sure I looked different, too. I sure as hell felt different.

"Are we ever going to be able to be those kids from sophomore year again?" I asked softly.

Zach shook his head. "No, but I try to think of that as a good thing. Back then, we thought we knew everything but were really in the dark. Now at least, we understand reality and are more prepared to face it. No one can stay young forever and it just so happens that we're the lucky sons of a bitches that get to grow older faster."

I was quiet for a moment. Almost everyone had left the room by now, but my friends and I remained seated. "Do you ever think we made the wrong decision in choosing this life? I mean, you have to admit that we could have saved ourselves a lot of heartache."

"But then who would be there to save the world from heartache?"

And there it was. The kicker. The reason that I could never regret my decision to bear this life. As a Gallagher Girl, I could save the world. Literally.

I sighed and stood up. My friends looked at me, quizzically, wondering if I was going to get mad and go off on some tangent about the unfairness of all of this (because I will admit, I'd gone off on that tangent a couple times over the past couple of weeks). Instead, I grabbed Zach's hand and nodded at them all to follow me.

"Come on. We have a letter to read."

-.-.-.-

_Dearest Cammie,_

_ As cliché as it sounds, you reading this most likely means I'm gone. If I am gone just know that I love you and your mother very much and that I never wanted to hurt you or leave you. Sometimes, destiny has plans for us and try as we might, we can't fight fate. Which is what I want to talk to you about, Cam. You have a destiny, a purpose. I could tell from the first time I held you and the time when you were four and broke NSA code. You are so special and that is why I am entrusting this mission to you. Tillie and Joe are good spies and loyal but I can never have the same confidence in them as I have in you. You have it in you to take down the Circle once and for all. You just have to dig within yourself to find that fire. There's someone I want you to meet. A computer genius I met back in college. Devon Wilson. I have reason to believe that he's affiliated with the Circle. Whether by choice or force I'm not sure, but I want you to get close to him. Through him, you could find the Circle's weak spot. Every organization has one._

_ I'm sorry this is rushed. There's so much I want to say. But hopefully, you'll never have to read this letter and I'll be able to tell you all of it in person._

_ I love you until the world stops turning,_

_ Dad_

-.-.-.-

We read my dad's letter after Tillie's memorial service. None of us had ever heard of Devon Wilson so Liz got to work trying to find him. Meanwhile, the end of the semester was sneaking up on us, and it was only three weeks later that we found ourselves swamped with final assignments and exams. It was amidst this chaotic week that Liz found him.

Needless to say, he wasn't at all who I was expecting. He was an average height, average weight, middle aged man. And he lived in, of all places, Roseville.

"Why? Do you think it's because he knows about Gallagher?" Bex asked.

Liz shook her head rapidly. "No, no. I was confused at first, too. I mean, with his skills he should be in Langley or the CFO of some major conglomerate or something. Instead, he's a plumber in Roseville, Virginia? It didn't make sense. And then I looked through public records and I found this…"

She switched files on her computer to reveal a marriage license. "He got married to Lily Pierce from Roseville, Virginia. They actually lived in D.C. for a couple years after they got married but when Lily got pregnant I guess they decided to raise the baby in her hometown."

"So how old is the kid now?" Macey asked.

"She's our age." Liz mumbled and then she cast a nervous glance at us. "Actually…we know her."

"How would we know her?" Zach asked. "There aren't any Roseville kids attending Gallagher."

"No, but..."

"But, what?"

Macey grabbed Liz's computer and scrolled down. She gasped and looked up at Liz. "DeeDee? Devon Wilson's daughter is _DeeDee_?"

Will the surprises never stop coming?

Bex guffawed. "Are you freaking kidding me? There's no way."

"Why not?" Liz asked. "Her dad is good with computers; that doesn't necessarily make him spy material."

"Yeah but he is wrapped up in the Circle. Can you imagine DeeDee with a villainous daddy?"

I shrugged, the shock wearing off. "We don't know for sure that he is part of the Circle. That was just a hunch of my dad's. And even if he is, we shouldn't judge DeeDee due to her dad's affiliations." My eyes met with Zach's. "Our parents don't define us. Only we do."

Macey nodded. "And what does it matter if DeeDee's his daughter? That shouldn't affect our plans. The Circle is too dangerous to let her stand in our way."

Bex rolled her eyes. "Obviously."

"What are our plans exactly?" Liz asked, her eyes flitting from one of us to the other. "I mean, we say we're going to take down the Circle, but first we need a plan. What's the plan?"

"We need to find out everything thing we can about Devon Wilson by any means necessary." I said. "I'll talk to my mom, see if she'll be willing to help somehow. But that can wait. For now, let's get through finals and enjoy at least a little bit of Winter Break because once we get back, nothing we do will be for play anymore."

The expressions on my friends' faces were stoic. We all knew now what we were getting into. By taking on this mission we were letting go of the last traces of our childhood. It would be different from anything else we had ever done before. We weren't shooting for a good grade or extra credit. We weren't going to be mulling over the cryptic words of cute boys.

We were entering the big leagues. Yes, that scared the hell out of me—how could I not be scared after everything I'd seen over the past year—but I'd be lying if I said that a part of me wasn't excited. It also helped to know that I wouldn't be alone. I had my friends. I had Zach.

I was going to listen to Tillie and my dad's last hopes for me. I would take down the Circle for good. And I wouldn't be alone when I did it.

* * *

**Thank you so much to everyone who has read my story! This is actually the longest story I've ever written believe it or not so it means a lot to me that so many people enjoyed it.**

**Thanks to** **GallagherGirlMacey, foreveryours66, pigckle8, myforeverisnow, Rosey3425, MiriCG, ,MeIsBee, kittykatkitkat, ilovemybestfriends, HannahBerry96, zachy K3, HellsOnEarth, Kelsey Goode, overobsesivebookfreak, goodeygirl23, edennn, Soleil Avant la Pluie, ..Blonde, Ashley, ivory, Bunniez, Sorrel14, Ugghhhh, anonymousspelling, GallagherGirl530, anonymous, ellenfp, HayleeGoode97, maysunrain, collectcall, MoreRandomThanYouWouldBelieve, Lmb111514, A person, R.I. plus M.P. love, Jazz-shoes, xosummerbabyox96, All That is Goode, IaMaMaZiNg XD, Faye Cullen-Fraser, Kayslee, invisible to u, 2goode4u, bordom911, una persona, Catie Carrington, baton914, isaidlalala, samcheese1, c a s e y c a m p l i n, eyes134, JesusFreak137, GaLlAgHeR-GiRl4EVER, Clarinetto14, Allie Goode, Lola, chellygoesrawr, HappyInsideGirl, maximumpotter101, ASDFGHJKL, Sammilovesbutterflies, TaylorAnne613, tally, Shannon, carly, the Chameleon, Patricia Alexis, Ashes2604, Tootsy rowl, pigeonfollower, awesomely goode 101, frizzy-wizzy-oringina, emmettluvrXD, and Aly Goode for all of your reviews!**

**My updates most likely would have been even more spread out with all of your loving pestering. :)**

**Also, thank you to everyone who favorited this story or alerted it. I would write all your names out...but that would take even longer than it did to write out everyone who reviewed and I want to get this out before heading to work.**

**You guys are awesome. See you when I post GG6 or the next chapter of _Frog, Snails _if you read that too.  
**


End file.
